AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED (ANS)

26 January 1919. Autograph. Slightly browned; mounting traces on verso. Very Good. On a 4-1/4" x 4" piece of paper Gilman has written and SIGNED the following: "Sun. Jan. 26 -- 1919./With warm regards/of the author/Charlotte Perkins Gilman/after a nice chicken!" Perkins, a feminist writer and grand-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, is perhaps best known for her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis and which is considered an important early work of American feminist literature. Gilman believed economic independence was the only thing that could bring true freedom for women and make them equal to men, arguing that motherhood should not preclude a woman from working outside the home: "A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband.... There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver." (Inventory #: 021005)