Author Guide · Feminist Fiction & Social Theory
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In 1887 a Philadelphia neurologist, Silas Weir Mitchell, prescribed Charlotte Perkins Gilman a “rest cure” for depression: no work, no reading, no writing. She later said it brought her “so near the borderline of utter mental ruin” that she could see over. Three years later she turned the experience into “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and spent the rest of her life arguing, in fiction, lectures and books of economics, that women’s dependence on men was a social arrangement, not a law of nature. From 1909 to 1916 she wrote every word of her own monthly magazine, The Forerunner. This guide covers her 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1892–1935 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) is best known for the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), the economic treatise Women and Economics (1898) and the utopian novel Herland (1915), which was not published as a book until 1979. Start with “The Yellow Wallpaper”: it is short, and her later books build on the argument it makes.
Where to Start with Charlotte Perkins Gilman
If you want the story that made her
→ The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) — a short, first-person account of a woman confined by a rest cure.
If you want her argument in full
→ Women and Economics (1898) — the 1898 book that made her name as a thinker.
If you want a novel
→ Herland (1915) — three men stumble on a country of women.
If you want her life in her own words
→ The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935) — the autobiography she finished before her death.
12 Charlotte Perkins Gilman Books, in Order
The Yellow Wallpaper
A woman taken to a rented country house for the summer by her husband John, a physician, is forbidden to work while she recovers from what he calls a nervous condition. Kept in an upstairs room, she writes a secret journal and becomes convinced that a woman is trapped behind the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. It first appeared in The New England Magazine in January 1892 and drew on Gilman’s own rest cure; it was reprinted by the Feminist Press in 1973, which brought her back to wide attention.
Women and Economics
Gilman argues that women’s economic dependence on their husbands, not any natural difference, keeps them as unpaid domestic workers and stunts their development. She proposes professional housework and childcare and homes without private kitchens. Jane Addams called it a “masterpiece”; it was translated into seven languages.
Concerning Children
Her economic argument applied to raising children: Gilman treats child-rearing as skilled work that deserves training and social organisation, rather than something every mother is assumed to know by instinct.
The Home
A critique of the private family home as an institution. Gilman argues that each household repeating the same cooking and cleaning is wasteful, and that it keeps women isolated from public life and paid work.
Human Work
Her broadest book of theory, moving beyond gender to a general account of work as the activity that holds human society together, and of how economic organisation should serve it.
What Diantha Did
Diantha Bell leaves her family and her fiancé to start a housecleaning business in California, and builds it into a maid service, a cooked-food delivery service, a restaurant and a hotel. The novel, first serialised in The Forerunner in 1909–10, turns the proposals of her nonfiction into a story.
The Man-Made World
Gilman argues that what passes for human culture — law, government, education, war, even literature and sport — has been shaped around male habits and treated as the norm, while women’s contribution is treated as a special case.
Moving the Mountain
A man who has been lost in Tibet for thirty years returns to an America of 1940 that women have reorganised on cooperative, egalitarian lines. Serialised in The Forerunner and published by Gilman’s own Charlton Company, it is the first of what scholars now call her utopian trilogy.
The Crux
A group of New England women moves west to Colorado to run a boarding house. The young Vivian Lane falls for Morton Elder, who has syphilis. The novel’s worry is less that Vivian will be infected than that their children would be, and that concern shows the eugenic thinking behind much of Gilman’s feminism.
Herland
Three American men — the narrator Van, Jeff and Terry — find an isolated country where women have lived without men for 2,000 years and have children by parthenogenesis. Their assumptions about women are tested one by one. Serialised in The Forerunner in 1915, it was forgotten until Pantheon published it as a book in 1979, with an introduction by Ann J. Lane.
With Her in Ourland
The sequel to Herland: Van takes his wife Ellador out into the world during the First World War, and she judges it by Herland’s standards. It ran in the last year of The Forerunner and first appeared as a book in 1997.
The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Begun in 1925 and published by D. Appleton-Century after her death in 1935, with a foreword by Zona Gale. It covers her childhood in poverty after her father left, her breakdown and the rest cure, her first marriage and divorce, and her decades as a lecturer.
In What Order to Read Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Only Herland and With Her in Ourland need to be read in sequence; Moving the Mountain belongs to the same utopian group but stands alone. Everything else can be read in any order.
Publication order does show how her thinking grew: one story about one woman in one room, then the economic theory of Women and Economics, then its application to children, the home and work, and finally the novels of the Forerunner years, where she imagines what the reforms would look like in practice.
A reading path
1. “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
2. Herland (1915)
3. Women and Economics (1898)
4. The Man-Made World (1911)
5. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935)
Everything Else Charlotte Perkins Gilman Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 10 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Poetry
2
2 books · 1893–1911
- 1893In This Our Worldher first collection of poems
- 1911Suffrage Songs and Versespoems for the suffrage campaign
Nonfiction
6
6 books · 1912–1923
- 1912Our Brains and What Ails Themserialised in The Forerunner
- 1913Humannessserialised in The Forerunner
- 1914Social Ethicsserialised in The Forerunner
- 1915The Dress of Womenon clothing and gender, serialised in The Forerunner
- 1916Growth and Combatserialised in The Forerunner
- 1923His Religion and Herson religion as shaped by men and women
Fiction
2
2 books · 1914–1997
- 1914Benigna Machiavellia novel serialised in The Forerunner
- 1997Unpunisheda detective novel written in 1929, published by the Feminist Press
The years · 1860–1935
Quick facts about Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Known for
- “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), her story of a woman driven to breakdown by a rest cure, and the argument that women’s economic dependence keeps them unequal
- 1860
- Born in Hartford, Connecticut
- 1909
- Launches The Forerunner
- 1915
- Herland serialised
- 1935
- Dies in Pasadena, California
- Born
- 3 July 1860, Hartford, Connecticut
- Died
- 17 August 1935, Pasadena, California
- Family
- Great-granddaughter of the preacher Lyman Beecher; Harriet Beecher Stowe was her great-aunt
- Married
- Charles Walter Stetson, 1884 (divorced 1894); her cousin Houghton Gilman, 1900
- Magazine
- The Forerunner, 1909–1916, which she wrote and edited alone: 86 issues
- Honours
- National Women’s Hall of Fame, 1994
The red mark is 1892: “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in The New England Magazine.
How Charlotte Perkins Gilman Writes: Fiction as Argument
Gilman wrote fiction to make a case, and said so: “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she wrote in 1913, was meant “to save people from being driven crazy”. The story works because it never states the argument. It is told entirely through the narrator’s secret journal, so the reader sees the room, the husband’s kindly orders and the wallpaper only as she does, and has to notice for themselves what is happening to her.
Her nonfiction is written for a general audience in the language of evolution and sociology: Women and Economics treats marriage as an economic relation shaped over centuries and therefore open to change. She belonged to the American Sociological Association from its founding in 1905, and the same biological framing that drives her feminism also carries the racial and eugenic ideas that readers now have to reckon with.
In The Forerunner, which she wrote alone for seven years, she tested her ideas in stories, often through an outsider: a man who wakes in a reformed America, three explorers in a country of women. The humour of Herland comes from watching their certainties fail. For writers who share her themes, from Kate Chopin to Virginia Woolf, see Authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Frequently asked questions about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s books
How many books has Charlotte Perkins Gilman written?
She published more than twenty books, alongside hundreds of stories, poems and articles. This page lists her 12 key books, from “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) to her autobiography (1935), and ten more works below, several of which first appeared as serials in The Forerunner.
What are Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s books in order?
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), Women and Economics (1898), Concerning Children (1900), The Home (1903), Human Work (1904), What Diantha Did (1910), The Man-Made World (1911), Moving the Mountain (1911), The Crux (1911), Herland (1915), With Her in Ourland (1916) and The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935).
What is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s most famous work?
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), a short story about a woman whose mind gives way under a rest cure prescribed by her physician husband, partly based on Gilman’s own experience of the treatment.
Where should I start with Charlotte Perkins Gilman?
With “The Yellow Wallpaper”: it is short and widely available, and her later books build on the argument it makes. Herland (1915) is the natural next step for fiction, Women and Economics (1898) for her ideas.
Was The Yellow Wallpaper based on a true story?
In part. In 1887 the neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell prescribed Gilman a rest cure that banned working, reading and writing. In “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913) she said it brought her “so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over”, and that she recovered only by going back to work. She sent Mitchell a copy of the story; he never replied.
What is Herland about?
Three American men find an isolated country where women have lived without men for 2,000 years and reproduce by parthenogenesis. The novel uses their surprise to question what their society thinks women are. It ran in The Forerunner in 1915 but was first published as a book in 1979.
In what order should I read Herland and its sequels?
Herland (1915), then With Her in Ourland (1916), which follows Van and Ellador out into the world. Moving the Mountain (1911) is often grouped with them as a utopian trilogy, but it has different characters and can be read on its own.
Has The Yellow Wallpaper been adapted?
Many times. Agnes Moorehead performed it on the CBS radio series Suspense in 1948; the BBC made a television film in 1989 with Julia Watson and Stephen Dillane; and there have been several films, stage versions, readings and an opera, by Dani Howard, in 2023.
Was Charlotte Perkins Gilman racist?
Her racism and eugenic views are well documented. In “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem” (1908) she called Black Americans “in many respects inferior” and proposed a compulsory labour corps for those who were not self-supporting, and she wrote against immigration as a threat to “Old Stock” Americans. Eugenic thinking also shapes The Crux and Herland. Scholars now generally read her feminism and these views together.
What was The Forerunner?
The monthly magazine Gilman founded in 1909 and wrote entirely herself until 1916: 86 issues of fiction, poetry and essays. What Diantha Did, Moving the Mountain, The Crux, Herland and With Her in Ourland all first appeared in it.
Was Charlotte Perkins Gilman related to Harriet Beecher Stowe?
Yes. Her father, Frederic Beecher Perkins, was a grandson of the preacher Lyman Beecher, which made Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher and the suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker her great-aunts.
How did Charlotte Perkins Gilman die?
She was diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer in 1932 and, an advocate of the right to die, ended her life with chloroform in Pasadena on 17 August 1935. Her last note said she preferred chloroform to cancer. Her autobiography was published later that year.
Footnotes
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman — Wikipedia
- The Yellow Wallpaper — Wikipedia
- Women and Economics — Wikipedia
- “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913) — The American Yawp Reader
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman — Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins — The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.”
— Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”, The Forerunner (1913)
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