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72 [GILMAN,] Charlotte Perkins Stetson. The Yellow Wall Paper. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1901 Small octavo. Original boards, covers decorated in yellow and white floral design by E. B. Bird, titles to spine and covers in black, top edge red, others untrimmed. Housed in a custom yellow cloth folding case. Spine rubbed and darkened, partly affecting text, joints and tips worn, covers somewhat soiled but still reasonably bright, contents fresh, marginal pencil annotation to p. 40. A very nice, entirely sound copy of this extremely fragile publication. rare first edition of this highly influential and impor- tant early feminist work, from the library of August Derleth, with his ownership signature on the front free endpaper: a very apposite association, linking this macabre story, written in the tra- dition of Edgar Allan Poe, with the co-founder of Arkham House, publishers of weird and supernatural fiction. Gilman (1860–1935) was a passionate and active advocate for women’s political and economic equality. Her semi-autobiograph- ical short story, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine , explored the psychological pain inflicted on women from gender inequality, the limitation of women to domestic roles, and the denial of intellectually stimulating work. “Unlike most nine- teenth-century feminists, who believed that universal suffrage would heal the world’s woes and correct gender imbalance and injustice, Gilman argued that woman’s economic dependence on man was at the root of her servitude and her excessively sexualized and limited social role” (Parini, p. 109). Uncommon institutionally, with OCLC recording 14 copies, all held in the US. Parini, Jay, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature , Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 2003. £5,000 [125934] 73 GILMAN, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. [In:] The Forerunner . A Monthly Magazine. Vol. VI. Nos. 1–12. New York: The Charlton Company, January–December 1915 Tall octavo. Original brick-red pictorial cloth, spine and front board stamped in black. Small ownership stamp of the Alice Park Collection to front past-
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edown. Spine ends lightly rubbed, faint dampstain to bottom edge of front free endpaper, first leaf, and last third of book block, the occasional crease to leaves, else a tight, near-fine copy. First edition, presentation copy of the first appearance of Gilman’s feminist utopian novel Herland , complete in 12 issues of Gilman’s magazine The Forerunner , inscribed by the author to the American suffragist Alice Locke Park , “Charlotte Perkins Gilman with love and honor for her friend Alice Park”, on the front free endpaper. A superb association: Park (1861–1961) was a leader of the California suffrage movement and spent her long life actively campaigning for a variety of social issues, including pacifism, prison conditions, education, labour laws, and conservation. Her primary interest, however, was in women’s rights; she was instrumental in gaining the vote for Californian women in 1911, almost a decade before women’s suffrage was recognised at a federal level. Park was also the author of the Equal Guardianship Law in California, adopted in 1913, which granted women equal rights of guardianship over their children, and was appointed delegate to a number of national and international suffrage conventions. After attending one such conference in The Hague in August 1913, Park travelled to England where she picketed Holloway Prison to protest the jailing of Em- meline Pankhurst. Park’s papers are at the Huntington Library, and her collection of suffrage posters was donated to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard in 1950. Herland , a witty novel which follows three young men as they dis- cover a utopia inhabited by an all-female race, first appeared across 12 issues of volume 6 of The Forerunner , a magazine launched by Gilman in November 1909 and published monthly until December 1916. In her autobiography Gilman wrote that in The Forerunner she “had said, fully and freely, the most important things I had to say” (p. 327). Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman , new edn, Universi- ty of Wisconsin Press, 1990. £15,000 [130959]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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