Vital Issues: Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the Boston Woman's Journal, 1904 [Paperback]

Vital Issuespresents an annotated scholarly edition of the weekly columns Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the most prominent American feminist intellectual during the early twentieth century, contributed in 1904 to the BostonWoman’s Journal, the leading journal of the US woman’s movement.

At the height of her career in 1904, Charlotte Perkins Gilman contributed dozens of essays to the BostonWoman’s Journal, “the only Voice of the Woman’s Movement in this country, if not the world,” as she later declared. Gilman aimed to transform “the whole woman movement” because she believed the right to vote was a necessary but insufficient goal. Her weekly column presumed that “the woman’s movement is larger than the suffrage movement and includes it; and that the very cause to which this paper is devoted will be most advanced by a more inclusive treatment.”

These essays silhouette the foundations of her feminism and anticipate much of her subsequent writing.Gary Scharnhorstis a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico; the author or editor of over fifty books, including award-winning biographies of Mark Twain and Owen Wister; the past president of the Western Literature Association; and the editor of the scholarly journalAmerican Literary Realism.“Vital Issuesis a meticulously edited collection of Gilman’s weekly columns published in the 1904Women’s Journal. Scharnhorst has produced an enormously useful edition that will appeal to scholars, students, and casual readers alike.”—Denise D. Knight, author ofCharlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fictionand editor ofThe Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman“In this collection, we find the foundations of Gilman’s progressive agenda for kitchenless homes, professionalized housekeeping, and childcare centers alongside hlóg