In 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her landmark work,
The Yellow Wall-Paper
, generating spirited debates in literary and political circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Today this story of a young wife and mother succumbing to madness is hailed both as a feminist classic and a key text in the American literary canon.
This sourcebook combines extracts from contemporary documents and critical reviews with incisive commentary, providing:
an introduction to the political, biographical and medical contexts in which Gilman was writing
a publishing and critical history of the work with extracts from the earliest reviews through to recent criticism
a chronology of key biographical and contextual events
an annotated guide to further reading
original illustrations and photographs of the author and figures related to the story.
The volume also constitutes an important critical edition, reprinting the complete original text as published in the
New England Magazine
in 1892, with extensive commentary.