Forerunner (magazine)

the late 20th century Christian magazine

The Forerunner was a monthly magazine produced by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (best known as the writer of "The Yellow Wallpaper"), from 1909 through 1916. During that time, she wrote all of every issue — editorials, critical articles, book reviews, essays, poems, stories, and six serialized novels. Gilman's drive for social change was the inspiration for Forerunner and its controversial articles. She succeeded in administering progressive ideas for change to the magazine's readers, growing support for her desires during the women's suffrage movement. The magazine was based in New York City.

The first issue of The Forerunner appeared in November 1909. Among the most notable pieces published in The Forerunner are the three novels of Gilman's feminist utopian trilogy, Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916). Herland, the most famous of these books, presents an all women society in which women reproduce themselves through parthenogenesis, and the female value of nurturing is upheld by the community. Gilman used The Forerunner as the venue for other major works, including Man Made World (1911) and her novels What Diantha Did (1909–10), The Crux (1911), Mag Marjorie (1912), Won Over (1913), and Begnina Machiavelli (1914). Gilman succeeded in commanding 1300 subscribers at the peak of the magazine's circulation, equalling around 6500 readers. The magazine was unbacked by advertisers and paid for by Gilman herself. It was published once a month, costing a dollar per year. The magazine ceased publication in 1916. Forerunner not only fought to contradict the popular media of the time, but also proposed new ideas on the place of women in society. The writings published by Gilman in The Forerunner were of sharp contrast to the texts that were available to women during the early 1900s. Women were expected to read about the appropriate etiquette assumed for them in marriage and the household. For example, the paramount journal of the early 1900s was Ladies’ Home Journal, which portrayed women as passive, focused on marriage and family issues, and was concerned with reaching the specific audience of middle class white women. She supported the idea that, “The major lack in the minds of women is in experience.” The articles were mainly stories of fiction which were more relatable to her audience at the time, and useful in contrasting the writings in other popular media outlets. Gilman took a conservative, slow going approach to social change for two main reasons: First, she adhered to the notion that social change was based on the scientific evidence of evolution and she understood the evolutionary process to be gradual; second, as an observer of the suffrage campaigns undertaken within her lifetime, she had learned that the less radical approaches were the ones that won adherents, while more revolutionary schemes frightened and alienated many middle class women.