Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a writer and lecturer who tried to create a cohesive body of historical and social thought that combined feminism and socialism.

Charlotte Perkins was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. She was raised by her mother, Mary A. Fitch Perkins, because her father left his wife and children soon after Charlotte's birth and thereafter provided little support, emotional or financial, to his family. Frederick Beecher Perkins, her father, was the grandson of the noted theologian Lyman Beecher, which made Charlotte's great aunt the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Beecher family was perhaps the most famous family in America, but when Charlotte's father left he took his family connection with him. She and her brother grew up in an unhappy, cheerless home. Mother and children lived on the edge of poverty, moving 19 times in 18 years to 14 different cities...