Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860–1935, American feminist and reformer, b. Hartford, Conn. great-granddaughter of Lyman Beecher . Prominent as a lecturer and writer on the labor movement and feminism, she edited the Forerunner, a liberal journal. She wrote many works on social and economic problems, the most important of which is Women and Economics (1898). She is perhaps best known for her semiautobiographical short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1890), which describes a womans nervous breakdown. Incurably ill, she committed suicide.

See her autobiography (1935) study by H. L. Horowitz (2010).