'The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.'

In the throes of a ‘temporary nervous depression’ following childbirth, a woman is brought by her physician husband to recuperate in an isolated New England mansion. There she is barred from her work of writing, denied any visits to friends, and encouraged to simply get better. Sequestered in the old nursery at the top of the house, with barred windows and a bed nailed to the floor, she has little to do but examine the strange wallpaper that surrounds her – and appears to shift before her very eyes.

This is the tale of a woman driven to the brink and beyond. Here accompanied by Gilman’s key wider stories, The Yellow Wallpaper endures as a groundbreaking, deeply disturbing classic of feminist horror.

'A great work of literature, the product of a questing, burning intellect' Maggie O’Farrell

The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.