In 1892 a furious Charlotte Perkins Gilman put pen to paper and created the avant-garde feminist work The Yellow Wallpaper as a warning – in this haunting Gothic tale, a woman is confined to a room and forbidden to do anything interesting – and she loses her mind. 

In 1887, following a severe nervous breakdown, Gilman had been sent to a leading neurologist, she explains in ‘Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper’, also included in this volume. He was a ‘wise man’ who ‘put me to bed and applied the rest cure… and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible”… and “never to touch pen, brush or pencil again” as long as I lived. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.’ 

The Yellow Wallpaper is both a haunting illustration of the treatment of mental health and a chilling Gothic tale, and this new edition makes it ready to enchant another generation of readers.