Promotional brochure advertising the lectures of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Widely known for her literary achievements and political activism, Gilman was also a successful speaker and public intellectual who relied heavily on her lecture engagements for regular income in the 1890s and decades following. Introduced here as “One of the world’s foremost women,” the brochure text cites William Dean Howells on her “genius,” noting his selection of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” as one of America’s greatest short stories; other glowing endorsements call her “the Prophet of Women, a smiling Isaiah,” and one quoted press review goes so far in its praise as to deny that Gilman was “controlled by hysteria, nor governed by momentary impulses.”

The advertised areas of Gilman’s expertise include ETHICS, ECONOMICS, EDUCATION, THE WOMAN QUESTION, THE CHILD, and GENERAL SUBJECTS — and a range of subtopics therein: Men, Women and People; Economic Independence for Women, Homekeeping vs. Motherhood, The Power and Duty of Women, and numerous others. Gilman was available for single lecture engagement, full courses, or for the most dedicated “A Gilman Week,” a six-day subscription course of two-hour discussion lectures. Issued by the Pond Bureau, which also managed the lecture tours of Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, and other notables. Cover features a portrait of Gilman reproduced from a photograph by Bianca Conti of San Francisco. An important piece of ephemera concerning a prolific writer whose two literary masterpieces have often overshadowed her equally influential work as thinker, speaker, and social reformer.

$450