The first collection of lectures and sermons that Charlotte Perkins Gilman delivered in the first four years of her career

The last decades have seen a resurgence of interest in Charlotte Perkins Gilman, now considered among the most important thinkers in US history. She is best known for fiction—such as the classic short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892)—and nonfiction, including her manifesto Women and Economics (1898), a work of intersectional sociology avant la lettre. Nevertheless, as a young writer, Gilman made her living delivering lectures. One cannot know Gilman without some knowledge of this body of lectures; this book fills that critical gap in Gilman scholarship.

Since the recovery of Charlotte Perkins Gilman began in the late 1960s and continued with the republication of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in the 1970s, her image in cultural memory has been increasingly celebrated. Andrew J. Ball presents here fifty previously unpublished texts. They trace the development of Gilman’s thoughts on diverse subjects like gender, education, labor, science, theology, and politics—forming an intellectual diary of her growth.

These lectures are not just a testament to Gilman’s personal evolution, but also a crucial contribution to the foundations of American sociology and philosophy. The Essential Lectures of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1890–1894 marks a historic moment, unveiling the hidden genius of Gilman's oratory legacy.

Andrew J. Ball is editor in chief of Screen Bodies: The Journal of Embodiment, Media Arts, and Technology. He is author of The Economy of Religion in American Literature: Culture and the Politics of Redemption.

“The Essential Lectures of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1890–1894 will fill one of the last remaining voids in the restoration of Gilman’s oeuvre and is therefore to be heartily welcomed. It will be a boon to Gilman scholars as well as to scholars and students of postbellum American thought and culture.”
—Frederick Wegener, editor of Edith Wharton: The Uncollected Critical Writings and editorial board member of the upcoming thirty-volume project The Complete Works of Edith Wharton.

"Andrew Ball's selection of early lectures is a significant contribution to Gilman scholarship. These never-before-published lectures indicate that the core of her thinking on several crucial issues was firmly established years before she produced the books on which her current reputation as the leading feminist intellectual of her time is based. . . . Professor Ball's introduction is immensely valuable in placing these lectures into appropriate historical and intellectual contexts."
—Alfred Bendixen, editor of the Library of America’s Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Novels, Stories Poems