Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ca. 1900, by C. F. Lummis, Wikipedia

 

Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her father, Frederick Beecher Perkins, was nephew of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catharine Beecher and grandson of evangelist Lyman Beecher, whose American roots could be traced back to 1637. Frederick Perkins divorced her mother, Mary Westcott, and Gilman and her one surviving brother were poor relations, moving frequently. Known as a writer and lecturer, Gilman, enormously proud of her Beecher blood, began her public career as a poet; her satirical verse withinIn This Our World (1893) enjoyed a near cult following among socialists in the United States and England.  However, her treatise Women and Economics (1898) established Gilman's international reputation as a feminist social critic even though she repudiated the term when it came in use in 1891. Today we know her best as the author of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892).