The Forerunner was a monthly magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 produced by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...

 (best known as the writer of The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the nineteenth century toward women's physical...

), 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.

Among the most interesting pieces published in The Forerunner are the three novels of Gilman's feminist

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

n trilogy, Moving the Mountain

Moving the Mountain (novel)

Moving the Mountain is a feminist utopian novel written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was published serially in Perkins Gilman's periodical The Forerunner and then in book form, both in 1911. The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that marked the later...

(1911), Herland

Herland (novel)

Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis . The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination...

(1915), and With Her in Ourland

With Her in Ourland

With Her in Ourland: Sequel to Herland is a feminist novel written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and originally published in 1916 in Gilman's self-authored and edited periodical The Forerunner...

(1916). Herland, the most famous of these books, presents an all-women society in which women reproduce themselves through parthenogenesis

Parthenogenesis

Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction found in females, where growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization by a male...

, 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).

The Forerunner takes up 28 full-length books.