The later poetry of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

the long version

This book contains 167 of the favorite poems of one of the most engaging intellectual leaders of the turn-of-the-century women's movement, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), who enjoyed a highly visible career as an activist, author, and lecturer. An influential social theorist and champion of women's economic independence, Gilman became an enormously prolific writer. Her highly acclaimed first edition of verse, In This Our World (1893), earned her instant celebrity and was followed by such groundbreaking works as Women and Economics (1898) and The Home (1903). At the time of her death, Gilman was in the process of preparing a second volume of her poetry for publication. Although she grew increasingly weak during the final stages of her three-year battle with breast cancer, Gilman's resolve to see her second book of poetry in print never diminished. She left the manuscript in the care of Amy Wellington, an editor and friend, for posthumous publication. "These poems," Wellington acknowledged, "are the full-flowering of Charlotte Gilman's philosophy." She failed, however, to place the manuscript, and it has remained unpublished until now.