Rare Book Feature of the Week!
Posted by Amanda Bullock , February 26, 2010 at 11:34pm
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s first book!
Here is a true rarity: the first book by fiction writer and women’s movement icon Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman, author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Herland”, married the artist Charles Walter Stetson in 1884 but suffered from post-partum depression after the birth of her daughter Katherine. She separated from Stetson in 1888 (the year this book was published) to move back to California, and the two eventually divorced in 1894. Gilman then devoted her life to writing and activism, and she was an intellectual leader for such movements as birth control, immigration reform, women’s physical fitness, and even euthanasia. “In her time,” critics have written, “she was certainly the leading intellectual of the woman’s movement in the United States.” This book reproduces classic paintings which are accompanied by capsule descriptions written by Gilman.
Gems of Art for the Home and Fireside was not even recognized by scholars to be Gilman’s book until about a decade ago, and so is exceptionally scarce. This ex-library first edition has the usual library stamps and binding and some mending with tape along the gutter. Gems of Art for the Home and Fireside, by Mrs. Charles Walter Stetson (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), J.A. & R.A. Reid Publishers, 1888. $1000
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