HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will' Hailed as one of the most distinctive and compelling literary voices of her era, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is praised today for her ground-breaking, feminist writing. Collected here, both The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland are extraordinary for scrutinising the patriarchal norms of turn-of-the-century America. In The Yellow Wallpaper a woman frantically paces the empty nursery at the top of a secluded mansion. Her husband John, a physician, is of no comfort and she can't bear to sit with the new baby as his crying makes her much too nervous. And then there's the putrid, yellow wallpaper which seems to shift and creep around the room before her very eyes... Herland, first published in 1915, follows a group of three men as they arrive in a female-only society. Peace and tranquillity thrive in this utopian land, forcing the explorers to question how their own corrupted, male-dominated world can survive.

"In place of happy love, lonely pain. In place of motherhood, disease. Misery and shame, child. Medicine and surgery, and never any possibility of any child for me." First published in her magazine The Forerunner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Crux is an emotive tale on the nuances of female independence, social expectation and love in early 20th century America. Following an all-female group who move west to open a boarding house for men, The Crux focuses on the experience of Vivian and her desire for the undesirable. Deeply in love with Morton, a charismatic young man infected with both syphilis and gonorrhea, Vivian's expected journey through her 'marriage' years is abruptly turned upside down. Torn by her personal intuition, the advice provided by her female companions and the knowledge that Morton will never give her healthy children, Vivian is faced with a permanent choice to forfeit love for the benefit of future generations. Balancing female and male perspectives on illness, personal preservation and nationalism, The Crux tracks Vivian's path through heart break, emotional development and female camaraderie. As an allegory for Gilman's own branch of utopian feminism, The Crux is a story of sacrifice and partnership deliberation within the framework of 20th century disease hysteria, eugenic ideology and developing modernism. Often omitted from her writing canon, The Crux is an integral aspect to understanding not only Gilman's own writing but the history of feminism as a whole.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a psychological short story about a Victorian woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. When her husband deems she needs a "rest cure" after the birth of their child, they rent an abandoned colonial mansion with a "queer air" about it. The narrator's claustrophobic room has unpleasant, oppressive yellow wallpaper which incites her decent into madness.

Originally serialized in 1915 in "The Forerunner," and never before published in book form, "The Dress of Women" presents Gilman's feminist sociological analysis of clothing in modern society. Gilman explores the social and functional basis for clothing, excavates the symbolic role of women's clothing in patriarchal societies, and, among other things, explicates the aesthetic and economic principles of socially responsible clothing design. The introduction, by Hill and Deegan, situates "The Dress of Women" within Gilman's intellectual work as a sociologist, and relates her sociological ideas to the themes she developed in some of her other works.

Although written in 1915, Gilman's treatment of clothing and dress remains relevant. This pioneering effort adds substantially to Gilman's reputation as a sociological theorist and feminist. In addition, it represents one of the earliest full-length specifically sociological analyses of clothing and the fashion industry. Ultimately, the author concludes that harmful and degrading aspects of women's dress are amenable to reform if men and women will work together rationally to change the controlling institutional patterns of the society in which they live. This groundbreaking work will appeal to those interested in Gilman, feminist theory, sociological theory, social psychology, women's literature, and women's studies.

First serialized in 1914, "Social Ethics" attempts to convince readers that individualist ethics have failed to make the world a safe place for children, and that we cannot progress to a fully social ethics unless we understand the morality of collective action from a specifically sociological point of view. Gilman argues that in order to be fully progressive, ethics must shift from its traditional focus on individual behaviors to the structure, morality, and outcomes of social or group actions. The social ills she addresses in her attempt to advocate for a reexamination of our ethics include topics still relevant today: militarism, waste, religious intolerance, conspicuous consumption, greed, graft, environmental degradation, preventable diseases, and patriarchal oppression in its numerous manifestations. Hill and Deegan's purpose in recovering this forcefully argued book from obscurity is to show not only that Gilman's central arguments remain largely valid and cogent today, but also that Gilman is a major and substantive contributor to the shape and importance of sociology in its formative years.

Traditional ethics, Gilman argues, fail to resolve the enduring problems facing society because our received ethical systems are invariably and mistakenly founded on individualist rather than social logics. The shape of our collective future, if it is to be progressive and morally responsible, depends fundamentally on adopting a sociological perspective, and our guiding principle must be to make the world a safe and nurturing place for babies and children. Anything less, in Gilman's view, is morally degenerate. In their carefully considered introduction, Hill and Deegan locate Gilman's personal and professional sociological identity within a network of influential and collegial sociologists, and relate "Social Ethics" to Gilman's interests in evolutionary thought, Fabian economics, feminist pragmatism, and the cognate work of Thorstein Veblen. The publication of "Social Ethics" in book form recovers an important theoretical treatise for a new generation of students, scholars, and fans of Gilman's Herland/Ourland saga.