Collected fiction and essays by a pillar of the American feminist canon—with an introduction by Halle Butler, a National Book Award Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and a Granta Best Young American NovelistCharlotte Perkins Gilman was a writer, editor, and journalist whose poems, articles, short stories, and novels had a single focus: equality for women. Although best known for “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” her spine-chilling takedown of the “rest cure” prescribed for postpartum depression, Gilman spent her life advocating for a woman’s right to an education, to creative self-expression and economic self-sufficiency, and an end to the consumerism that blinded women to the ways that society held them back. This collection brings together Gilman’s best-known work with her lesser-known satirical short stories to provide an overarching introduction to this relentless ideologue. The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.
