"First published in 1892, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity. In the involuntary confinement of her bedroom, the hero creates a reality of her own beyond the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wallpaper--a pattern that has...

"Library of America presents the fullest selection ever of visionary American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman: two novels, forty-four brilliant short stories, nearly two-hundred poems, and both the published and manuscript versions of the landmark story "The yellow wall-paper." The short fiction presented here showcases Gilman's mastery of ghost stories, allegorical fantasy, and social realism and includes a virtuoso series of stories written in imitation...