A WOMAN'S PLACE by Emi Daly

A WOman's PLACE

ISSUE NO. 1

How Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management Changed Women’s Publishing July 2022

FROM THE EDITOR A Woman’s Place is a magazine created by women, for women. Inspired by one of the first female publications; Beeton’s Book of Household Management, we aim to produce 24 issues that centre on the history of women’s publishing. Our magazine has chosen to shed light on women’s voices and stories, rather than their appearance. For this reason, A Woman’s Place focuses on words, not images. For too long, magazines have been obsessed with women’s bodies and looks, and in doing so, their messages are lost and their voices are silenced. This, our first-ever issue, is an ode to our inspiration; the marvellous Mrs. Beeton. Published 160 years ago, her book empowered young women the world over. Beeton was the first to applaud women’s work in the home, and the profound impact she made during a short life has stood largely unrivalled by any other woman of her time. Generations of young women relied on the book’s advice when they had nobody to turn to, and it stands as a unique insight into the everyday domestic life of women during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Her ground-breaking projects are recognised as the some of the very first ‘lifestyle publications’, and gave rise to the women’s magazines that we are familiar with today. Magazines had a remarkable influence on how society saw and spoke about femininity, as well as the way in which these women viewed themselves. These publications serve us as time capsules, and we will look at how they document the changes in women’s roles over the last two centuries. I hope this issue opens your eyes to the impact that one woman can have on the course of history. 25-year-old Isabella’s unique command of language challenged crushing patriarchal norms, and pushed the boundaries of feminine discourse further than ever before. Almost 200 years later, Isabella Beeton still stands as a remarkable role model for women far and wide.

SARAH A. CHRISMAN EDITOR

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THE VICTORIAN PHENOMENON Exploring the original Domestic Bible and the life of the incredible woman who wrote it. 08–21

AN INHERITED TRADITION A look into the impact Beeton’s use of language had on women the world over. 22–37

GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS Tracing the history of feminine publishing after the publication of Beeton’s book. 38–45

TYPE OF TALK— LANGUAGE IN MAGAZINES A look at how the language of these magazines has shaped our ideals and view of womanhood. 46–59

THE DEATH OF THE DOMESTIC GODDESS What place do role models like Beeton hold in the society of the 21st century? 60–67

THE VICTORIAN pheno -MENON

Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management was a Victorian publication like no other. Published in 1861, it came to be one of the most famous books of the 19th century. The book was a huge success and sold nearly two million copies by 1868. Although it is over 150 years since she died, the name ‘Mrs. Beeton’ is still known around the world. Her book was a beloved companion for young women who, for the first time in history, had not learned household skills from their mothers. It changed the perspective on the role of women in the home and in wider society.

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Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861 08

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The Book of Household Management

THE BOOK OF HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT

HELENE HANLON

What people read can tell us an awful lot about their culture, and Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management was certainly one of Victorian Britain’s favourite books. With 2,000 recipes and over 1,000 pages of advice on every aspect of household management, it is now seen as being the very first Domestic Bible. Covering topics from cooking, cleaning and housekeeping to childrearing and relations between husband and wife, Mrs. Beeton’s book was trendsetting publication that a spoke to the common issues faced by women starting out in their adult life. The hefty tome remains one of the most famous books of non-fiction ever to be published, and is still in print today. Interestingly, Mrs. Beeton chose to aim Household Management at a new emerging generation of young middle-class women who had moved away to the large Victorian cities, and, in the absence of their own mothers, needed maternal expertise on the uncharted territories of marriage and motherhood. In targeting this untapped and often ignored demographic, Beeton’s book was a modern and ground-breaking piece of women’s publishing, that also helped housewives navigate the pressures of Victorian society. An increased

Issue No. 1

female mobility during the Industrial Revolution meant that these young housewives often lived in different towns away from their families, and with no-one to turn to, they needed help to navigate the early years of married life. For middle-class Victorian ladies, the huge challenge of managing a household was now made immeasurably easier with the aid of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and its author has earned her place in the history books. Miss Isabella Mary Mayson was born in London in March 1836. As the eldest girl in a family of 21 children, she was forced to assist her mother in the household duties and the rearing of her younger siblings. In 1856, Isabella married Sam Beeton, who co-owned and edited monthly periodical the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine.

“ The mistress is the first and the last; she is the Alpha and the Omega in her establishment.” Isabella began her career in 1857 by contributing three articles a month to her husband’s magazine. In 1859, aged just 25, Mrs. Beeton began writing a series of monthly instalments in the periodical,

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later compiled and published in one volume as her Book of Household Management. In the first year alone, it sold 60,000 copies. Over the next few years, it would sell 2 million more. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term ‘Mrs. Beeton’ became used as the generic term for ‘an authority on cooking and domestic subjects’ as early as 1891. Explaining her reasons for expanding the separately published columns into one, comprehensive guide, she said; “What had moved me, in the first instance, to attempt such a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by their lack of household management.”

“ There are none which take a higher rank in my estimation than those who perform household duties.” Upon the book’s publication in 1861, Household Management was met with instant acclaim, and far eclipsed successes of Beeton’s predecessors, as her tone offered inspiration and assurance to her readers. The book proved to be a domestic encyclopedia, with advice on all aspects of the successful running of a house. Any young woman who had felt her position to be unimportant and useless could now be persuaded by the strength

of Beeton’s rhetoric. It was not only the rhetoric that made Beeton’s book Victorian phenomenon. Her guide also included innovations that changed the face of cookbooks for generations to come. She was in fact the first writer to list ingredients at the beginning of her recipes, and also the first to supply cooking times for dished. As a result, her recipes could be followed even by those with no prior experience. She also included a detailed ‘Analytical Index’ at the end of the book, which was part of Mrs. Beeton’s genius for organising information, and it is clear that she possessed a talent for conveying ideas to her middle-class audience, and celebrated household economy as a useful science rather than something to be ashamed of. Beeton’s book was broad enough in scope to be of interest to everyone from the female managers of great estates down to their humble servants. The pages listing servants’ duties and wages were just as useful to the servants themselves as they were to their employers. Household Management became an unimpeachable reference as to what they should expect from the people they worked for, and of what, in turn, was expected of them. The book’s primary audience, however, was the housewives of the burgeoning middle-class. For these women, the book was their servant— and

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The Book of Household Management

quite a good one at that. Household Management contains advice that is timeless. In Mrs. Beeton’s eyes, the woman in charge of a home had as much responsibility and deserved as much respect as any other manager. She wanted the reader to feel that keeping house was as important as any man’s job, and she famously compared the mistress of a household with the “Commander of an Army”. For her, a comfortable middle-class household is nothing less than the foundation of a properly functioning moral economy. It is hard to shake off the thought that Mrs. Beeton’s work is exactly the kind of anti-feminist and the gender-stereotyping literature that we now see as backwards and sexist. However, despite its aiming to keep women within their domestic spheres, her book in fact created a sisterhood that allowed women to feel that they had some control within a lifelong career that was forcibly thrust upon them by society. This was an important milestone for housewives everywhere. Historians have labelled Beeton’s work a ‘powerful force in the making of the Victorian middle-class’ sense of domesticity.’

attention and popularity. One reason for this was the fact that it was regularly updated with details of modern inventions. Readers didn't know or care whether Isabella Beeton herself was responsible for updating the book. All that mattered was that ‘her’ advice continued to feel relevant to them. Household Management has been in print since it was first published in 1861, remaining a best-seller. Perhaps Beeton’s early death is in fact what allowed her spirit to become so adaptable; taking on many different meanings for different people. Women who sought advice in her work had an ideal image in their mind of its author. In death, she achieved divine status.

In February 1865, a little less than four years after the publication of her Household Management, Isabella Beeton died from puerperal fever during the birth of her fourth child. She was twenty-eight years old. After, the book continued on, garnering

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TURN THE HOM INTO A

“ AS IT IS WITH THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY, SO IT IS WITH THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE. A WIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT DUTY IS TO

OME

idyll.”

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Isabella Mayson born in London

Father dies and mother remarries

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

July Revolution takes place in France

1830

Isabella Beeton had a tragically short life, dying during the birth of her second son at just 28 years old. This is a timeline of major events in both literature and world events that took place during her lifetime.

Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe

Queen Victoria ascends to the throne

1835

Attends culinary classes in Germany

1840

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Great Famine begins in Ireland

Great Exhibition opens in London

1845

1850

Mrs. Beeton Literature World Events

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Timeline of Mrs. Beeton’s Life

Begins writing her cooking column

Marries Sam Beeton

Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, Samuel Beeton

1855

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Dies of puerperal fever in childbirth

Book of Household Management published

On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

1860

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

American Civil War comes to an end

Vladimir Lenin born in Ulyanovsk

1865

1870

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THE SHORT LIFE AND LONG TIMES KATHRYN HUGHES

A Woman’s Place

The Short Life and Long Times of Isabella Beeton

On St. Stephen's Day 1932, the National Portrait Gallery opened an exhibition of their new acquisitions to the public. Twenty-three unseen likenesses went on display, all of which were then to be added to the nation's permanent collection of the great and the good. But oddly out of place among the confident new arrivals, all oily swirls, ermine, and purposeful stares, was a small handtinted photograph of a young woman dressed in the fashion of nearly a hundred years before. She had a heavy helmet of dark hair, a veritable fuss of brooch, handkerchief, neck chain, and shawl, and the fixed expression of someone who has been told they must not move for fear of ruining everything. The caption beneath her announced that here was ‘Isabella Mary Mayson, Mrs. Beeton (1836–65)’, journalist and author of the in famous Beeton’s Book of Household Management.

OF ISABELLA BEETON Issue No. 1

That the trustees of the gallery decided to hang Mrs. Beeton on their walls says something about changing attitudes to the recent past. During the twenty-five years following the old Queen’s death, the Victorians had seemed like the sort of people to keep your distance from. An article in The Times had begun: ‘Isabella Beeton lived in the Victorian era, which, as we all know, was dismally frumpish.’ People began to wonder about the names that had formed the background chat of their childhood. One of the trustees then explained why he thought the time was right for the National Portrait Gallery to acquire a portrait of Beeton: ‘Recently we were bequeathed a portrait of Bradshaw, the originator of the Railway Guide, and I think that Mrs. Beeton is at least a parallel case.’ The Gallery’s trustees decided that they were prepared to accept, for the first time in their history, a photo portrait to hang among their splendid oils and marble busts. The circumstances of Beeton’s life had managed to keep her hidden from history. She was only 28 when she died, which meant few letters written, with few diaries kept and even fewer photographs taken (the Gallery picture is one of only two adult portraits of her). Details about Beeton’s death— and as a result, her life— were suppressed almost from the moment she passed in 1865. In order to protect their investment in the growing ‘Mrs. Beeton’ brand, the publishers wanted to let the

I / The Victorian Phenomenon

readers think that the lady herself was alive, well, and busy testing recipes to go into the endless editions of her monumental work that were now proliferating in the marketplace. Beeton had thus become the goose whose eggs were solid gold. In these circumstances, half contrived and half chance, she slipped straight from life into myth. So by 1932, after decades of foggy indifference, the general public was ready to be intrigued by the revelation that Mrs. Beeton, whose name they all knew so well, had indeed been a living, breathing young woman. The presentation of her portrait to the public had provoked a gratifying amount of press coverage. One writer set the approving mood when he declared: “Mrs. Beeton is the most famous English authoress who ever lived. She is a household name in thousands of homes in which Jane Austen is as little known as Sappho;

“ Household Management achieved the deathlessness of a classic, as well as the circulation of a best-seller.” Many other journalists soon followed their lead, and proceeded to wax lyrical about the ‘Confucius of the Kitchen’. The Evening News made the suggestion that part of this sudden interest in Beeton might be the fact that she spoke from the bygone world when “homes were homes, and when cooks were cooks.” Beeton started to become one of the most widely recognized images circulating in British print culture. There was something about the enigmatic young woman in the photograph that encouraged all kinds of projections.

untimely death in 1865, she then became a potent commercial and cultural force. Detached from her mortal body, this ghostly Mrs. Beeton could be appropriated for a whole range of purposes. In the 150 years that have passed since she died, she has been turned into the subject of several plays and even a musical. Mrs. Beeton’s life story was once almost on Broadway. Each October the images from her book are turned into best-selling Christmas cards. At the time of writing, you can take your pick from ‘Isabella Beeton’s Cookery in Colour’, ‘Tea with Mrs. Beeton’, ‘Mrs. Beeton’s Healthy Eating’, and, the oddest of all, ‘Beeton’s Hand-Made Gifts’. Her now-iconic likeness has been worked into all kitchen ephemera from tea towels to table mats. You can even buy an apron adorned with her face in which to wrap yourself, in the hope perhaps that her qualities, whatever they might be exactly – will rub off. The profound and lasting impact Isabella made during her short life has stood largely unrivalled by any other woman of her time, as generations of young women relied on her advice when they had nobody to turn to. Her book now stands as a unique insight into the domestic life of the 19th and early 20th centuries. For if she is still to be remembered in another 150 years, it will not be for writing the Household Management, a book that surely very few people have read nowadays, but rather for holding up a mirror to our intimate needs and desires. With her representation of ‘Home’ – the place we go to be loved and fed – Mrs. Beeton has become part of the fabric of who we feel ourselves to be.

For by 1932, and with Britain mired in economic depression, political uncertainty and also social unrest, it was easy to feel wistful for a time when middle-class homes could afford to keep a full complement of domestic staff, none of whom would think of answering back. The photograph was reproduced in countless newspaper articles, and went on sale in August 1933 as a postcard in the Gallery’s shop, where it quickly established itself as the third most popular portrait in their whole collection. Beeton soon became one of the most widely recognized images circulating in Britain’s print culture at the time. After Beeton's

A Woman’s Place

The Short Life and Long Times of Isabella Beeton

Isabella Beeton, The National Portrait Gallery, 1857

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INHERITED TRADITION

The Book of Household Management quickly became the standard wedding present for young women, who brought it with them to the British colonies around the world. The first to discuss matters of the home in simple and straightforward terms, the book and became an invaluable asset to young women throughout the Empire. It was also regularly updated, which allowed it to maintain its relevancy.

II / An Inherited Tradition

Ireland 1801

Canada 1867

Great Britain 1707

The Gambia 1843

British Guiana 1831

Gold Coast 1821

Sierra Leone 1808

Nigeria 1884

At the time Isabella Beeton published Household Management, the British Empire was expanding to become the largest in history. Young Britons carried her book to far corners of the world. This map shows the Empire’s colonies and protectorates at the turn of the century.

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Spread Throughout the Empire

Sudan 1899

Oman 1891

India 1858

British Burma 1885

Papua New Guinea 1884

Somaliland 1884

South Africa 1806

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Rhodesia 1895

British Malaya 1826

Brunei 1888

Australia 1827

New Zealand 1841

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FAR FROM THE PERFECT HOUSEWIFE CHISATO YAMADA

Mrs. Beeton may now be remembered chiefly for her invention of the infamously dismal ‘toast sandwich’, but Beeton's Book of Household Management provided much more than simple recipes and tips on keeping your home running smoothly. Through her unique use of language, she served to challenge the traditional Victorian ideals, thus calling into question the accepted representation of domesticity. Chisato Yamada explains why Beeton’s guide is much more than just a cookbook, but changed the way young women saw themselves in the Victorian Age. Beeton’s name and status had made her a wellknown figure, and Household Management was only gaining in its popularity. However, it seems her now-infamous life and her matronly character as the ideal middle-class housewife, were largely misconstrued and distorted by history. After her short life ended at age twenty-eight, the details of Beeton’s life story were often distorted and misrepresented by her family and biographers. Therefore, The Book of Household Management is almost the only accessible and credible material in which Isabella left a few clues through which to gain a pivotal insight into her attitude to women’s

domestic roles and lives. She represented an ideal middle-class housewife, thus deeply challenging notions of Victorian domesticity. Her book is also the only accessible and credible material through which we gain insights into the domestic roles and lives of women in the 19th century. The book’s success, as previously discussed, was due in part to the way in which Isabella shifted the image of cooking from drudgery to pleasant, fashionable work with her intelligence and imagination. The most significant aspect of this was, however, her weaving of historical and anthropological strands together into her account in order to create a connection between private cooking and femininity. This approach enabled her to represent a more modern way of life, not merely as a housewife but also as a writer and advocate for middle-class women. Since very little is now known about her own domestic life, Ms. Kathryn Hughes’ biography offers new interpretations of Isabella’s writing in terms of her family relations. In some ways, the relationship between Isabella, who also worked as a journalist, and Samuel was extremely unusual for its time. Isabella’s decision to support her husband’s career, paired with her

A Woman’s Place

Far From The Perfect Housewife

strangely modern ideas about the middle-class Victorian woman, undoubtedly affected both their marital and working relationship together. In result, examining Isabella’s life and career will not only suggest the ideal figure of the Victorian housewife, but also reveal a very complex side of the Victorian household and its management during the mid-nineteenth century. As one of the busiest Victorian house-mistresses, Isabella had neither stayed idly at home or simply focused on domestic work: she herself was stalwartly mindful of being a good wife and of her responsibility for domestic management. Beeton worked devotedly for Samuel as mistress of his household, and, in turn, her work was truly supported by his strong affection towards her. Sam actively participated in the furnishing of their home, in order to make it more comfortable for them both. This behaviour was intimately connected with the distribution of power between wife and husband. Isabella had recognised before they married that he “will soon have the entire management of me, and I can in turn assure you that he will find in me a most docile and willing pupil.” Her prospective words proved true, when she went on to involve

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herself enthusiastically in assisting with Samuel’s published periodicals. While Isabella’s intellectual curiosity and hatred for boredom stimulated his ideas, her energy undoubtedly spurred Samuel on, which created a complementary relationship between them.

“ A woman must bear alone the great weight and immense responsibility of her situation.” Most importantly, their very strong partnership influenced not only their matrimonial relationship, but Isabella’s professional motivation. Isabella received no payment from Samuel for her writings. Her biographer, Sarah Freeman, assumes the lack of a salary was never really a concern for Isabella Beeton, even though she must have been aware of her great contribution to her husband’s work. This reflects the norm in Victorian households at that time, whereby middle-class wives were financially dependent on their husbands. In that context, if Samuel had chosen to pay Isabella for her contribution, it would have threatened her identity in middle-class society. For the average

II / An Inherited Tradition

Victorian woman, earning money was seen as an infringement of their dignity and would “de-class” them, and this stance occasionally made exiles of middle-class women. As Isabella’s career was interwoven with her husband’s, this maintained their typical middle-class conjugal relations. For these reasons, it would be true to say that Isabella’s motivation to work was maintained by her passion for writing itself and her partnership with Samuel. Therefore, Isabella’s acceptance of the ideal notion of Victorian marital femininity represented the new mood of career-oriented women as well as the typical attitudes and values of a working housewife: while Isabella commuted to Samuel’s office by train and worked as a writer with him, she was fully responsible for household management and raised her children. As more recent research has revealed, domestic spaces were more flexibly negotiated, with a much more complex relationship between men and women than previous historians had thought. This surely allows us to interpret Victorian professional life in a new way. The relationship between Isabella and Samuel did not encourage the separation of their respective spheres. Her lifestyle was rather

unconventional but was a new middle-class life in the Victorian period. Control and hard work were seen as the most important characteristics of a gentleman. For Beeton, these virtues were also applicable to domestic duties, and she was aware of the importance of hard work as the key to success in the household. Working systematically and efficiently played a key role in daily affairs and household management. Beeton’s challenge extended to improving the position of women by enhancing their professionalism as young housewives. Reflecting social strands and her own lifestyle, she represented a new model of Victorian mistress, who was akin to “The Commander of an Army.” Giving female readers full responsibility over their household management, she showed housewives how to support their husbands in Victorian society.

Excerpt taken from The Ideal Victorian Housewife: Beeton’s Challenge to the Traditional Representation of Domesticity, Chisato Yamada, 2010.

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Far From The Perfect Housewife

Most Common Occupations for Women (%) Department of Labour 2019 Census 1900

2020

Domestic Servant

Teacher

Typewriter/ Secretary

Clerk/Cashier

Farm Labourer

Launderer

Saleswoman

Cook

Nurse

Retail Assistant

Manager

Waitress

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“ MORE SERVICABLE IN LIFE THAN PETTICOATED PHILOSOPHERS, BLUSTERING HEROINES OR VIRAGO QUEENS ARE THE

AND HOUSEWIVES

S.”

VIRGINS

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The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1877

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The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine

THE ENGLISHWOMAN’S MEGAN WARD

DOMESTIC MAGAZINE Issue No. 1

In its first eight years, from inception in 1852 to 1860 expansion, the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine combined the aspirations of its young readership with cultural interest in the related virtues of domesticity and routine. The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine was a major departure from the typical women’s magazine of the period— starting with the use of the word “woman” in the title. Also, after the Lady’s Magazine and the Lady’s Museum had merged into the magazine, La Belle Assemblee, they temporarily ceased publication in 1847, creating an opening in the market for women’s periodicals in Britain. Distinguishing itself from its competitor magazines, the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine chose to target the middle and lower-middle-class audience; at 2p, it was significantly less expensive than the one-shilling lady’s magazines of the past. It was also much less extravagant in appearance: about the size of a modern paperback book, with a plain cover and thirty-two pages of closely spaced type. Unlike the similarly priced Family Friend and the Christian Lady’s Magazine, the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine was instead not particularly concerned with religion; it celebrated instead the amalgam of domestic ideology with generic morality. The word “English” in the title suggests that the two forms of the domestic, the local and national, are inextricable. The editor, a young Sam Beeton, was eager to announce the originality of his project. He writes in the preface to the first issue, “The purposes and intentions of our little Magazine are of a nature so different to those of any other now before the public, that we think it necessary to explain at some length the leading features which we intend should characterise it.” The editorial tone is self-deprecating— “our little Magazine”— in order to be aggrandising— “is so different”— a strategy for sounding at once authoritative and accessible. The claim of its difference was true in one feature at least: its dissemination of practical advice for women running homes, in particular its inclusion of recipes and dress patterns. The EDM’s largest competitor in its early days was the New Monthly Belle Assemblee, which was published also

II / An Inherited Tradition

as the Lady’s Cabinet. However, this magazine did not contain the patterns, recipes, or other practical instructions that characterized the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. Also, the previous magazines presented themselves as leisurely entertainment, focusing on fiction, poetry, travelogues, and lengthy descriptions of fashion plates, with no instructions on how to reproduce the outfits pictured. In particular, Margaret Beetham claims it is “very difficult to exaggerate the importance” of the EDM’s fancywork and sewing patterns to future women’s publications. The magazine’s presentation does reveal much about the ways that industrial routine shaped the interaction of taste, class, and sensation in this period. Patterns were designed to be desirable yet accessible to readers who were of a class who could not possibly afford to buy clothes from Paris. The magazine did position itself as an authority on middle-class domestic life, but it did so in order to speak to those who did not have such authority. The title, price, and monthly publication of the EDM was geared to a specific readership which it also sought self-consciously to create. By 1857, 5 years after its initial launch, EDM had amassed a general circulation of <50,000 readers, which does speak to its influence and sense of its own presence. According to the Daily Telegraph,

“ She had, in one year, gained a greater number of patrons than any magazine in the entire British Empire.” Several times the editor prefaces the bound edition with a comment such as, “no lady will consider her bookcase complete unless she numbers amongst its treasures the EDM.” The use of the word “lady” in tandem with his reference to the “treasures” of that lady’s bookcase, identifies the magazine as at once a reference guide and a status symbol. The guidance of the editorial voice remains strong, but the magazine also presents itself as a centre within which the readers’ voices can congregate and overlap. A magazine, either as monthly issues or a yearly volume, progresses

linearly as the issues accumulate. This information and attitude proved popular. Professor Nicola Humble points out that the innovations “remain features of cheap women’s magazine for the next century.” In 1857, Ladies’ Treasury became one of EDM’s earliest imitators, with a format that included, as its subtitle announced, “Entertaining Literature, Education and Fine Art, the Domestic Economy, Needlework, and Fashion.” The EDM worked hard to convey not only a clear sense of practicality and entertainment, but, above all, of middle-class solidity within reach of the upper echelons of the working classes. The magazine positioned itself as an authority on middle-class domestic life, but it did so as a way to speak to those who did not have the authority. While the magazine targets “the woman who employed servants,” the actual readership also probably included upper-level servants. The variety of its readers contributed greatly to the magazine’s multi-vocal, aspirational tone. The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine is typical of the period in its emphasis on the virtues of a strict routine in the home. Routinised behaviours were reliable and efficient, two domestic virtues instilled by the working of patterns. The domestic woman embodies, as the magazine describes it, “the unseen, spiritual, mighty influence of Home, and Woman’s love: producing its desired effect and doing its work, more by invisible machinery than by outspoken word.” This is distinct from the more-common admonishment found in the Ladies’ Treasury— “employment is the safeguard of young female minds.” Rather than suggesting merely that idle hands give way to bad thoughts, the EDM articulates a particular relationship between training and sentiment. The domestic routine should appear effortless, but the process is actually the reverse: affection is a result of routine, of her habitualised activity. Home is home only to the extent that it feels at once like “a woman’s love” and like “machinery.” The capacity for routinised thought, feeling, and action, in other words, was not limited to the industrial towns of the North, but also existed literally and imaginatively at home. Mrs. Beeton’s

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The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine

infancy was spent in her father’s fabric business. As a baby, she would have crawled amongst the giant fabric pillars, absorbing the textures and smells of the Victorian textile trade, the sharp tang of cotton, the powdery feel of velvet, and the flutter of muslin. Among its fiction, poetry, and advice, the magazine includes an article on ‘Cotton’, and breathlessly catalogues the vastly immense system of industrial production: “We have twenty million spindles whirling their rapid course in spinning their cotton. This huge mass of cotton is woven in three thousand factories, and employing four hundred thousand persons.” In this case, the “we” stands for all English cotton manufacturing, yet it is inseparable in tone from the editorial “we” that dictates pattern choice, and dispenses domestic advice. The magazine conceives of routine, domestic and industrial, as inherently English, moral, and modern. From its inception, the EDM identifies taste as a defining feature of the middle-class woman and the home. The way women touch, taste, see, hear, and smell their surroundings is collapsed into an idea typically given the name of just one sense: taste, a physical and aesthetic response rife with class significance. The language used to describe the patterns takes them beyond the realm of the practical; they develop, inculcating a particular sensory response in the reader that she would interpret and present as feminine, middle-class aesthetic sensibility. The patterns are presented as essential in forming a reader’s sense of taste and as products of that tastefulness. Initially, the magazine includes just one or two patterns but increases numbers of patterns and the amount of commentary until they were a distinguishing feature of the magazine. The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine attempts to codify taste as both a sensory response and as a value essential to middle-class femininity.

The magazine’s cultural authority lay partially in its position as a repository of collected wisdom and partially in the reader’s own complicity in that wisdom. Characterising itself as a helping hand, it embraced the “uninitiated, who sometimes from carelessness, but oftener from the want of a guiding monitor” needed instruction in “domestic management; and embracing as it does actions minute and insignificant detail, but each one tending to swell the amount of happiness if performed, of misery if neglected.”

Excerpt taken from ‘A Charm in those Fingers’: Patterns, Taste, and the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, by Megan Ward for Victorian Periodicals Review, Fall 2008.

Although these claims cannot be substantiated, they speak to the publication’s huge influence. Between the EDM and its sister project, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, the Beetons were a formidable force in domestic instruction in Victorian times. Their magazine emphasises the domestic housewife as “the unseen, spiritual mighty influence of Home and woman’s love: producing its desired effect and doing work more by invisible machinery... than by outspoken words”. The goal was to “make our humble publication a small means of assistance to the happy homes of all of our subscribers.” Their project was highly successful, cementing the pair as true pioneers of feminine publishing, still remembered 150 years later. In choosing to cater for the ‘ordinary’ woman, they changed the face of women’s magazines, and sparked a phenomenon that continues to this day.

The guidance of the magazine’s editorial voice remains strong, but the magazine also presents itself as the centre within which the readers’ many voices can congregate. Characterising itself as a helping hand, it embraced the uninitiated, who needed instruction in home management.

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“ A MUCH GREATER CHARACTER THAN THE LADIES IN ROMANCES, WHOSE SOLE OCCUPATION IS TO MURDER MAN, MUST SURELY BE

SHE WHO MAK HER hu AND CHILDREN

KES

N HAPPY.”

II / An Inherited Tradition

Woman's Own, 1947

A Woman’s Place

Advice for the Mid-Century Woman

ADVICE FOR THE MIDCENTURY WOMAN

ROSITA BOLAND

Billed as a ‘book of information and advice for the woman of today’, the title of Frankly Feminine is just about as blunt as they come. The 544-page manual was published in 1965 by Grolier Society, London, and edited by Eileen McCarthy. It can be seen a modern Household Management, aiming to provide a handbook for young women as they embarked on marital life. Unlike Mrs. Beeton’s infamous guide, however, this particular book is not feminist in tone. Despite the publishing date, its content seems to hark back to the 50s rather than the more liberated ‘Swinging Sixties’. With an emphasis distinctly on hearth and home, Frankly Feminine’s thirteen detailed sections cover topics ranging from beauty, relationships and manners to home-making, cookery, and entertaining. For the women who owned this book in 1965, it would have provided them with all the tools needed to deal with everything from “how to make a pretty speech” to “the secrets of sex appeal.” How does a book like this stand up in today’s world?

be exploring space, and setting up home on a satellite.” However, McCarthy goes on to write, “we shall always have the trick of finding our greatest contentment within a small and quite homely circle. Today’s complete woman – who finds happiness in her home with her family, and friends” is for whom the book is written. A glance at the contents reveals that Frankly Feminine is a book that tackles everything from beauty to gardening and room design to house insurance, as well as weddings, pregnancy, childcare and family life. The book also offers a crash course in cookery, covering baking, cuts of meat, types of fish and cooking for Christmas and other events. Even basic plumbing and carpentry techniques are included. As it chidingly points out, “Many handy-women fall down on jobs because their toolbox is poorly stocked.” The book is full of useful practical tips on household management, and has an answer to almost any household problem you may face.

At the start of the hefty tome, the editor begins, “For today’s woman, the world seems limitless. She can come and go about the continents and the oceans; soon, if the fancy takes her, she may

Frankly Feminine seemed to have its eye firmly set on the better class of woman (complete or otherwise), giving advice on which household linen to buy and what cutlery will be required

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Excerpt taken from Man, I Feel Like a 1960s Woman, Rosita Boland for Irish Times, 2014.

II / An Inherited Tradition

when setting up home. There was an obvious expectation that the readers would be hosting dinner parties. The fashion and beauty advice seem to take priority, with career advice trailing far behind. There is much emphasis on having and keeping a good figure to the extent of having a ‘Plump-Up Routine’ for women to gain curves. Plenty of advice on looking after face, hair, and hands, though there is not a single non-white woman to be seen, and a definite fondness for featuring pretty, slim blondes. Frankly Feminine encouraged women to see all men not as friends, but as potential husband material. “If we’re wise, we know when and how to give in.” The book also encourages women to think of men as people who can’t be expected to be relied upon. It says that women should allow for men’s ‘superiority complex’ and the fact that ‘Most men have very little sense of humour about themselves’. Not very promising.

“ There is no equality between sexes. Women are not on the same footing as men. We just aren’t world-shakers.” However, some advice can be sensible, such as pointing out that we can’t expect happiness to come from without (‘like manna from heaven’), it has to come from within ourselves. And ‘never make the mistake of thinking that life would be fantastic if you were doing something different’. There are useful and sensible pieces of advice here, about being confident and independent, but the relationship advice seems very dated. Having said that, some advice would now be out of date, and much of the social etiquette would now be behind the times, but perhaps the parts of the advice still hold true. Frankly Feminine marks the passing of an era in which women’s lives were very different.

nineteenth-century girls may rarely have existed in real life. Information contained in prescriptive literature must always be examined carefully and compared to experiences recounted in women’s own voices, with attention to classes, age, race, and regional variations. Advice books had their heyday in the strict society of the 1950s, just as they had almost a century before with books like Household Management. While they may seem stuffy and conservative on the outside, there is still a lot to be learned from these publications. As a piece of social and cultural history, Frankly Feminine is very instructive. It is an intriguing and novel book for dipping into, but probably of more use now for the practical angle than the relationship or life advice. It gives us insight into the way young women lived their lives, and forces us to come to terms with misogyny and patriarchal regimens that our predecessors had to be subjected to. Seeing how lucky we are and also how far we have come (although undeniably there is still more work to do) can really make the modern woman grateful for her new-found place in society. Over the last 60 years, the relationship dynamic between men and women have clearly changed drastically, and with many women still fighting for equality, a look back at what everyday life was like in the Fifties shows us just how far we have come. Underpinning all the stories and tips in the book are themes of everyday lives of women, of their hopes and fears, from the young factory girls all the way up to society debutantes, immigrants to beauty queens, is the prevailing idea of women who always felt that they fell short of perfection. Women whose reality never matched up to their aspirations. And whose actions and assumptions were governed by the idea that women have no independent identity outside men.

Authors, female and male, have always relished telling women what to do. This plentiful advice literature prescribes proper behaviour for women at every stage of their lives. What really occurs in women’s lives, of course, may in fact bear little relationship to the conduct recommended in these works. The purity of mind advocated for

A Woman’s Place

Advice for the Mid-Century Woman

The advice sounds jarring now, as Rosita Boland discovered when she reviewed it with a friend;

RB— W ell, my first impression is that it’s written for girls going to finishing school. It’s so archaic. In the book, men cannot just be your friends. They are only seen as potential husbands.

VW— In the book’s eyes, the best way to get on well in a relationship is to be quiet and agreeable. If you are passive, men will stand by you and you won't be “crying into your pillow at night”. It’s basically telling you to suppress your real personality; that you never have the right to be angry.

You have to suppress your feelings because you have to always be nice. It’s almost saying you should not to be yourself. Its laughable.

The parts about how women should behave towards men are so depressing. It claims that men were not ‘born considerate’, and are creatures who ‘respond best to subtle treatment’. Basically, if you want to be happy, you better accept the excuses a man makes for himself. Men dislike our habit of treating them like small boys when they annoy us.

It’s all so insulting and unkind to men. Women are being told how to manipulate their relationships with men. It’s telling us that women are emotional train wrecks and men are machines. Saying they respond best to subtle treatment makes them seem like animals. It’s about tricking men into doing what you want, not to mention how it talks about women’s bodies.

Yeah, there’s plenty of advice here for looking after yourself, but there's not one black woman to be seen in the book. It definitely has a fondness for slim blondes like Grace Kelly— basically if you don’t fit that profile you’re wasting your time.

It’s all about forgetting who you really are.

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III

GIRLS GIRLS girls

The Book of Household Management and its parent publication, the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, are regarded as the first ‘lifestyle publications’, and paved the way for women’s magazines. Their magazine was cheap and easily available, setting a blueprint for subsequent publications. Speaking on the problems faced every day by the ordinary woman, these magazines appealed to the masses. Over time, they became a vital source of not just entertainment, but companionship for generations of women all over the world.

III / Girls, Girls, Girls

A HISTORY OF WOMEN’S KATHRYN HUGHES

MAGAZINES 42

For a few short weeks in 1693, the first women’s magazine in Britain's history grappled with what would become a staple ingredient of the genre: relationship problems. The Ladies’ Mercury promised to answer questions relating to love with “Zeal and Softness becoming to the Sex”. All their many readers had to do was send in details of puzzling male behaviour over to the coffee house near Saint Paul’s and wait for ‘the Ladies Society’ to crack the code, or come up with some bracing advice about not bothering. The Mercury lasted for just four issues and was, in a pattern that would echo down the centuries, published by a man. Nonetheless, it was the first time that ‘women’ as a special interest category had been defined as needing a magazine of their very own. I once attended Between the Covers at the Women’s Library, designed to narrate how we got from “Zeal and Softness” to the ranting covers of our current magazines. These are the ones that shouted gleeful accusations that Kate was fighting an incipient beer gut, or that Amy was self-harming again, and helpfully drew an arrow or circle to emphasise the evidence. Drawing on the Library’s rich collection of old periodicals, Between the Covers endeavoured to show the development of the genre in the last 300 years, from home-making to campaigning by the way of liberating, down to the just plain entertaining. Less than a century after the brief experiment that was the Ladies’ Mercury, the format for the women’s magazine was beginning to emerge. Titles such as the Lady’s Magazine combined a gawping love of royalty with simple needlework patterns and sentimental fiction, for the eminently affordable price of 6d. It also, inadvertently, awakened in its readers a hunger for authorship. Invited to send in their poems, translations and stories, the ladies obliged, so that by the end of the 18th century, a third of the magazine’s fiction was supplied by unpaid contributors. This brought along its own set of problems. Amateurs, no matter how talented, were much more likely to disappear on holiday without making proper provision, or simply run out of steam. As a result, serialised novels had a knack of stopping abruptly, leaving the female reading nation wondering whether the young

A Woman’s Place

A History of Women's Magazines

couple really did overcome all obstacles to their happy ending. The answer was almost certainly yes. The big moment of transformation, at which point women’s magazines stopped being an elite product written and read by ladies with time on their hands, arrived in 1852 with the launch of the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. Here was a product targeted at the middle-class wife and mother. Edited and written by Samuel Beeton, a hyperactive young publisher and avid entrepreneur, the EDM developed the format that still gets played out in domestic magazines such as Essentials. There were columns on pets and cookery, written eventually by Sam’s wife, Isabella Beeton of Household Management fame, and an emphasis on handicrafts. The true masterstroke of the magazine, however, was its coverage of fashion. By the 1860s, each issue featured a coloured plate showing anatomically impossible slim women crammed into the latest Parisian fashion. This was also accompanied by selected paper patterns and detailed instructions on how to make the item at home. The EDM was able to flattering its readers’ sense of themselves as fashion cognoscenti while giving them the skills and tools to approximate the effect for fraction of the price. The magazine contained a problem page, wherein every month, ‘Cupid’s Post Bag’ featured a series of letters from readers whose problems were initially confined to the reluctant fiances, bossy big sisters and resilient freckles. In his evidently male persona of ‘Cupid’, Samuel Beeton was not afraid to jolly these “fair young friends” out of their self-pity, in telling a plump correspondent that the quickest way to lose weight was to just take a job as a governess to some annoying children with ‘a naggy mama’. By the 1870s, however, the problem pages, since aspirationally retitled ‘Conversazione’, had taken on an alarming life of their own. Instead of asking for advice about gentlemen callers, readers appeared to be flooding the magazine with explicit and erotic letters about the pleasures of wearing tight corsets and spurs and the effectiveness of whipping young girls and servants. What started out as saucy soon toppled over into downright pornographic (if you want to read the “tight-

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lacing” and “whipping” issues of the magazine in the British Library today, you have to sit at a special desk of shame under the watchful eye of a librarian). Increasingly it became impossible to tell whether these were genuine letters from domestic Englishwomen or fakes inserted into Cupid’s post bag by none other than Mr. Cupid himself. Quite apart from its clear weirdness— the contemporary equivalent would perhaps involve the letters pages of Good Housekeeping given over to readers describing all the thrills of threesomes— this process points to the porous nature of women’s magazines.

Excerpt taken from ‘Zeal and Softness’: Women’s Magazines Down the Centuries, Kathryn Hughes for the Guardian, December 2008.

Just as the readers became writers in the early Lady’s Magazine, so today’s consumer of Bella, Prima or even Grazia is now urged to email her reactions to the top stories or vote on some pressing issue, and in doing so generates more content for the magazine. The fantasy, if not the practice (these products are, after all, put together by professional journalists), is that a reader of a women’s magazine may become its co-author at any moment. What’s more, though a title may present itself as tightly defined (in the rhetorical world of women’s magazines, the ‘Cosmo girl’ could never be confused with the Bella reader), there is always an anxiety that it is in fact on the point of dissolving into something else. Just as Sam Beeton’s version of the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine veered perilously close to the kind of pornography circulated in gentlemen’s clubs, so more recently the lads’ mags of the 1990s have had to argue strongly that they should not be consigned to just the top shelf of the newsagents. Nuts is not Knave, though the casual reader would really be hardpressed to say exactly why. Contemporary to the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine was the Englishwoman’s Journal, which explicitly campaigned for women to have an economic, legal and social identity outside the home. This was not because the ladies that read the Englishwoman’s Journal (and, confusingly, they were Ladies - mostly the daughters of uppermiddle-class men with fortunes of their own) had anything against domesticity. But they did want to make sure that when home life failed

III / Girls, Girls, Girls

a woman there were the alternatives to the fauxgenteel and poorly paid option of becoming a governess. As a kind of forerunner of Spare Rib, the Englishwoman’s Journal campaigned for girls to be trained engravers, commercial artists, and schoolteachers. Aware of the potential offence of its message, the magazine was careful to take a high moral line, unlike its natural successor, the boldly named Freewoman, which was banned by WH Smith in 1911 for being “disgusting, indecent, immoral and filthy”. There were the magazines for the mill-and-shop girls, which were full of fantasy-fuelling fiction involving a cross-class romance. In these serial novels, viscounts and sheikhs had an odd habit of hanging around the places where ordinary girls might trip over them and accidentally steal their hearts. Even then, they wanted watching.

“ The Beetons were pioneers in female publishing; the first to listen to and care about the concerns of women.” A cover from a 1926 spread of Peg’s Paper shows a dodgy-looking aristocrat with a girl in a cheap hat, and underneath the words: “Should She Trust Him?” The tone, though careful, is not remotely improving. While the mothers of these girls might have been obliged to slog through the homilies of the Servants’ Magazine, thoughtfully provided by their employers, these independent young women only wanted a sweetener for their slivers of free time. Today they would be pouring over Heat, trying to decide whether Kelly Osbourne was right to lose all that weight. What Between the Covers reminds you again and again is that magazines, rather than the naturally occurring phenomena summoned up by their readers’ desires, are actually commodities of the most intricate kind. Few other artefacts have to be sold twice simultaneously to be considered successful. But this is exactly what a magazine editor must do, selling her product both to the reader via the cover price and the advertisers through the rate card. As a result, the women’s magazine proliferates, clones and collapses according to a positively Darwinian model of the market. That is why the identical Woman and

Woman’s Own were started within a few years of each other by rival companies in the 1930s. It is why, in the late 70s, National Magazines brought out Company, as a way of mopping up some of the appetite created by its mammoth market leader, Cosmopolitan. It’s why, too, magazines are folded into one another when they start to fail. It happened in the 1830s when the Lady’s Magazine merged with La Belle Assemblee before disappearing altogether, just as it happened over a hundred years later when Harper’s merged with Queen to become Harpers & Queen. It then dropped the monarch and reinvented itself as Harper’s Bazaar. Among these quiet, long-drawn-out euthanasias, the old exhibition includes a few luxuriant flops. I was disconcerted to find that I had contributed to most of them. There was, for instance, the Working Woman, an imported American title that lasted for three brief years in the mid-1980s under legendary and slightly scary Audrey Slaughter. The magazine had a fatal fissure running through it. On page after page, purposeful-looking women in business suits explained how they had got to the top in the corporate world. These articles were then interspersed with pieces on how to find a mascara that would take you from the boardroom to the bedroom. The thing just didn’t seem to hang together. As we know now, women who bustle around with briefcases tend to read the Economist by day and then switch to Vogue in the bath. They don’t need a hybrid that tries to do both. The other flop featured in the exhibition is Riva, which lasted an expensive eight weeks before bowing to the inevitable conclusion that ‘glossy’ and ‘weekly’ were not adjectives that could coexist in the same sentence. Yet other parts of the show remind one that, for all their usual emphasis on nowness and newness, women’s magazines can only develop at the same rate as culture itself, which means unevenly. A screen offers the chance to take a 1978 Cosmo quiz entitled “How Liberated Are You?”, which has questions both quaint - “Is it right that more men than women go to college?” —and up-to-

A Woman’s Place

A History of Women's Magazines

date— “Do you agree that women are expected to juggle too many roles?” As always, I couldn’t work out the scoring system and I left Between the Covers unable to say whether I felt liberated or not. What will happen to women’s magazines in the future is unclear. History does suggest that they do well in a recession, with more launches during the difficult period of 1870-1900 than at any other time. Naysayers point to social media as the eventual graveyard of the print magazine, while others emphasise that these products are consumed in places where access to a computer is either difficult or dangerous, the bus or bath. Perhaps the most important consideration is the way that, over the last 20 years, newspapers have increasingly colonised the tone, subjects and even formats of women’s magazines. Whether incorporated on to the feature pages or as stand-alone supplements or, newspapers now roam through the familiar territories of love, sex, food, fashion and family. Sometimes they get it wrong, but more often they do it very well indeed. What exactly that leaves for women’s magazines, and whether they will all be able to fashion something new out of readers’ residual desires, remains to be seen. Women’s magazines frequently reflect the changing view of women’s role in society. In the 18th century, when women were expected to participate in social or political life, those magazines aimed primarily at women were relatively robust and stimulating in content; in the 19th, when domesticity became the ideal, they were inclined to be insipid and humourless. After about 1880, magazines began to widen their horizons again. Critiques of women’s magazines as vapid wastelands that traffic in the business of making women feel badly about themselves but just empowered enough to buy their advertisers’ products are valid. Very valid. But to reach that conclusion and stop, one must also ignore the long and blended content history of women’s magazines. The truth about women’s magazines, past and present, is much more complicated.

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THE BOLDLY-NAMED FREEWOMAN MAGAZINE WAS BANNED FROM THE MARKET IN 1911, AS IT WAS DEEMED TO BE “DISGUSTING,

IN IM AND

III / Girls, Girls, Girls

1901

Harper’s Bazaar

Tatler

1861

1886

1916

Beeton’s Book of Household Management

Cosmopolitan

Woman and Home

1852–1879

1885

1920

The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine

Good Housekeeping

Ideal Home

1850

1867

1870

1873–1957

1892

1911

Women’s Home Companion

Vogue

Woman’s Weekly

1890

1910

A Woman’s Place

Timeline of Women’s Magazines

1964–2006 Family Circle

1932

1965–1975

1976–2001

2010

Woman Magazine

Nova

Working Woman

The Gentlewoman

1932

1955–2011

1972

2012

Woman’s Own

She

Ms. Magazine

Ladybeard

1930

1950

1970

1990

Still in Print No Longer in Print

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2010

The popularity of women’s magazines sky-rocketed from the late 1800s onward, with many publications founded that are still in print today. There was a magazine for every kind of woman— from wealthy heiresses and middle-class housewives, down to shopkeepers and even factory girls.

TYPE of TALK

In this section, we have compiled striking quotes from women’s magazines over the last 130 years. Contrasting downright offensive language with what was seen as empowering at the time, the quotes provide a unique insight into our changing language, and reflecting developments in our culture. Women’s magazines capture the changing view of women in society. They reflected the pressure to be the ‘perfect housewife’, yet after the 1960s, we see these publications take on a more liberated tone, challenging many of these outdated expectations.

IV / Type of Talk

A Woman’s Place

Background

For generations, women’s magazines have filled a cultural niche, adopting the voice of a concerned big sister to chide women into keeping up with the current hemlines — but also the current headlines. The glossies were relatable, visually pleasing and useful all at once — a tactile, addictive habit. You could tear out the page and say, “This is a haircut I’m going to bring to my hairdresser.” There was just something about a glossy, to read and engage with. Even if you didn’t subscribe, the dog-eared copies of Marie Claire and Good Housekeeping and Seventeen found their way to you— at the doctor’s office, at a friend’s apartment, or in a teacher’s staffroom. In their heyday, these publications also offered a pipeline for the nation’s best female journalists. Joan Didion worked for Vogue in the 1960s. Good Housekeeping once published Betty Friedan, and Susan Orlean and Gloria Steinem once wrote for Glamour. These publications gave us iconic editors such as Anna Wintour.

“ Thumb through old issues, and you can see how women’s roles were not only changing, but how magazines were driving the change.” These magazines battled a sense that they were somehow lesser, and with people not taking them seriously because they were all meant for women. Many critics believe women’s magazines clung far too long to pummelling readers with messages that their bodies were less than desirable and that their boyfriend’s eyes probably wandered and that only products could fill the void. The new ‘Westernised’ ideal of beauty was upheld by these publications. Whether they were discussing recipes or selling a bathing suit, there was the same kind of woman that most couldn’t truly identify with. Many believe that magazines’ insistence on the status quo, even as womanhood changed dramatically, led them to practical irrelevance.

Vogue, August 1900

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delivered to readers from Birmingham to New York to Mumbai — the girlfriend-style advice, the gospels of orgasms and equal pay, the reminders to always be dieting — can now be found in many places online, from #fitspo posts on Instagram to junior-feminist sites such as Jezebel, which has elbowed in on coverage of pop culture, #MeToo and the workplace. Instagram influencers now dictate the ‘Next Big Lipstick Colour’ and how to get that no-makeup makeup look. Culinary sites such as Food52 have cornered what the lady rags used to call “cookery,” with none of the gendered notions about who does the cooking. And as for the cheerfully unscientific personality quizzes? Now, there’s BuzzFeed for that. Of course, women's magazines can still be found online under the same old banners of yore, as legacy titles try to find new life as digital products. Many have found success in this different venture. Cosmopolitan’s website, for example, lures over 19 million unique visitors a month, while Glamour can attract more than 6 million. The old brands are drawing YouTube followers with original videos, and with the viral success of pieces such as Teen Vogue’s gaslighting essay, embracing a new brisk, women-focused political reporting that made them must-reads just a couple of decades ago. The strange mystique certainly lives on, but some fear what will be lost in the transition. The old type of magazine had fact-checkers on staff; a team of people whose sole job was to verify every detail in the magazine. As a result, everything came from legitimate sources. Even if they can still afford to have that level of rigour, the time when the glossies were one of the most influential voice in women’s lives seems to have come and gone. Titles in the women’s sector — Better Homes and Gardens vs. Good Housekeeping, say — have always struggled to differentiate from each other. There’s a lot of overlap. In a different media climate, maybe they could survive, but it seems likely that this one won’t support it.

In an era of body acceptance and the umpteenthwave of feminism, modern women don’t want to read 2,500 articles a year on how to lose 10 pounds or get rid of their love handles. It’s just reductive and superficial. What women’s magazines once

IV / Type of Talk

Women's Life, May 1919

A Woman’s Place

Background

In an era of body acceptance and the umpteenthwave of feminism, modern women don’t want to read 2,500 articles a year on how to lose 10 pounds Girls' Cinema, December 1923 or get rid of their love handles. It’s just reductive and superficial. What women’s magazines once

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IV / Type of Talk

Woman and Home, May 1939

A Woman’s Place

Background

In an era of body acceptance and the umpteenthwave of feminism, modern women don’t want to read 2,500 articles a year on how to lose 10 pounds Ladies' Home Journal, October 1956 or get rid of their love handles. It’s just reductive and superficial. What women’s magazines once

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IV / Type of Talk

Glamour, August 1960

A Woman’s Place

Background

Spare Rib, July 1972

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Cosmopolitan, June 1989

A Woman’s Place

Background

Glamour, June 2001

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IV / Type of Talk

gal-dem, Issue 4, 2016

A Woman’s Place

Background

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IV / Type of Talk

“ ARE YOUNG GIRLS GETTING TOO INDEPENDENT?” The Ladies Home Journal, March 1892.

1890–1929

The expansion of women’s magazines into a new major industry dates back to the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (1852), as well as from Myra’s Journal of Dress and Fashion (1875) and Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal (1875), both of which supplied the reader with dressmaking patterns and met the needs of a mass audience. Several quality magazines were started, such as The Lady (1885) and The Gentlewoman (1890), which was one of the first to acknowledge the financial necessity of advertisements, but there were many more cheap weeklies like Home Notes (1894), Home Chat (1895), and Home Companion (1897). Of the US magazines, one of the hardiest was Harper’s Bazaar (1867), modelled on an old Berlin women’s periodical, Der Bazar, from which it obtained its fashion material. The field of women’s magazines was finally transformed, however, by Cyrus Curtis

with his Ladies’ Home Journal (1883). This soon reached a circulation of 400,000 and broke with sentimentality and piety to become a stimulating journal of real service to women. Other popular magazines were Ladies’ Home Companion (1886) Good Housekeeping (1885), which established a testing station for consumer goods early in the 20th century. Vogue (1892), a fashion weekly (later a monthly) dedicated to “the ceremonial side of life,” which was designed for the elite of New York City and had Cornelius Vanderbilt among its early financial backers. However, because women subscribed to these magazines rather than encountering them on news-stands, the publishers did not have to ‘sell’ themselves through their front cover. They had no use for catchy headlines or provocative cover

A Woman’s Place

1890–1929

“BEWARE THE CLEVER DAUGHTERS OF CLEVER MEN.” The Ladies Home Journal, March 1892.

statements. The language in these magazines reflects its appeal to older audiences; primarily mothers of young women, who had money to spare. There are countless articles that fuss and worry over the conduct of the ‘nation’s daughters’, capturing the sense of fear over exploitation of young women as emerging technologies opened up a whole new world of socialisation after the Industrial Revolution. Writers for these magazines debated whether the new fast-paced and liberal society was a safe place for their girls. We can also see the beginnings of feminist leanings in the magazines, with an emphasis being placed on remarkable achievement. Some of the articles did appear which centred on female role models who excelled in all areas; industry, academia and domestic life. However, the success of these young

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women is rarely seen as something of their own making. As the headline above illustrates, female achievement was almost always associated with the men that ‘facilitated’ it. A woman was never recognised as truly successful on her own terms, and men were portrayed as vital contributors to her achievements. Relating the exceptional feats of a young girl to the success of her father, or a wife to her more ‘well-known’ husband, robbed women of their own independent triumphs, and belittled what they had accomplished on their own. Certainly, when women failed, there was no such comparison to their male counterparts. Success was always related back to the men in the story, placing as much praise on their shoulders as possible, but failure was seen to highlight the ‘weakness’ of women. This contributed to the popular belief that women were unequal to men.

IV / Type of Talk

“ THE GOOD WIFE ALWAYS KNOWS HER PLACE.” Woman’s Own, October 1950.

1930–1969

This long period, which encompassed the Great Depression, the Second World War, Civil Rights Movement and the beginnings of the Cold War, was a time of great social and political upheaval, where the status quo was disrupted. In order to maintain some sense of normalcy in what was a very tumultuous time, the women’s magazines relied heavily on traditional ideas of femininity, portraying the ‘home’ as the safest place for a woman to be. They reverted back to language that is now seen as anti-feminist, claiming that a woman’s purpose was to serve her husband. Society periodicals lost ground after WWI to those catering to the so-called ‘new poor’ and ‘new rich’. Publications that appealed to mass audiences proved to be less alienating and much more popular. Weeklies such as Woman’s Own

(1932), Woman’s Illustrated (1936), and, above all, Woman (1937), sold in high numbers. Throughout the Thirties, rather than today’s lone cover girl, the front page often showed pictures of married couples. Such magazines were seen as ‘tradepapers’ for home-makers, helping women in the running of their homes. During WWII, when the world changed beyond recognition, magazines went from being a folly, however helpful, to being a true friend to women. The challenges facing women were hard and the government used magazines as a way of communicating with the ever-more important home front. They gave practical advice on how to cope with shortages and rations, as well as coping with husbands serving abroad for long periods. Just as they had disappeared off to war, men also disappeared from the front covers. The ‘cover girl’ emerged,

A Woman’s Place

1930–1969

“MANHATING— SOMETIMES YOU JUST CAN’T HELP IT!” The Ladies Home Journal, March 1892.

and she has remained a truly steadfast feature of women’s magazines ever since. Magazines held their currency through the Fifties, where the new affluence and emerging consumerism only aided sales of magazines. Covers stuck, visually, to the tried-and-tested formula, but they also started to ‘sell’ themselves on news-stands, using bright colours and arresting headlines. The development of a mass-market meant there was a ‘one-size fits-all’ approach. As long as the magazine ticked certain boxes, copies would sell. The bond between these feminine publications and the advertising companies strengthened, as women were deemed to be the greatest buyers of consumer goods. Magazines then began to be distributed through supermarkets rather than bookshops or newsagents. One of the first and

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most successful was Family Circle (1932). A trend toward youthful markets was indicated by She (1955), broad and robust in outlook; Honey (1960); Annabel (1966), for younger married women in particular; and Nova (1965), which was branded “The new kind of magazine for the new kind of woman”. The magazine covers were highly stylised and proclaimed that Nova was a magazine that did things “the 1965 way”. Despite many publications emerging that appealed to a liberal demographic, established women’s magazines continued to imply that maintaining a well-run home was the best way for a woman to keep her husband happy. They aired the frustrations of housewives, but didn’t rock the boat. In an attempt to hold onto a sense of stability in unstable times, women were firmly situated in the home.

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“ MAKE DINNERS HE’LL BE SURE TO LOVE YOU FOR.” Good Housekeeping, February 1970.

1970–1989

The women’s magazines of the 1970s and 1980s reflected the changing culture into which they were published. During this short period, they began to move away from the traditional image of womanhood shown by their predecessors. The place of women in society shifted immensely after the liberated 1960s, and women wanted more independence. To reflect this, magazines captured the problems and situations that were encountered by the working women of the late 20th century. This pivot to a different approach lended itself to quite a few luxuriant flops. Working Woman, for instance, was an imported American title that lasted for three brief years in the mid-1980s. The magazine had a kind of fatal fissure running through it. On page after page, purposeful-looking

women in suits explained how they had got to the top in the corporate world. These articles were interspersed with pieces on how to find a mascara that would take you from the boardroom to the bedroom. As we know now, women who bustle around with briefcases read the Economist by day and switch to Vogue in the bath. They don’t need a hybrid that tries to do both. By the late 1980s scores of political and literary magazines of broadly feminist sympathies had been since established, one of the most prominent being Ms., a non-profit magazine with a circulation of about 500,000. It remains in print still to this day. The concept of women’s liberation became less taboo, and began to enter the realm of popular magazines. Despite this, conservative women’s magazines continued to maintain their popularity, particularly among older audiences. Through the

A Woman’s Place

1970–1989

“SHOULD YOUR HUSBAND SHARE YOUR PAYCHECK?” Woman, November 1977.

Seventies, Family Circle consistently outsold the more feminist-leaning Cosmopolitan (1886) and outspoken feminist publication Spare Rib (1972). With advice on keeping a comfortable home for your husband and children, it was more like magazines of the 50s than its contemporaries. The contrast between feminist and conservative language plays out even on the same front covers, with stories on keeping husbands happy set beside advice for the modern working woman. It seems these magazines had no problem contradicting themselves, as long as this meant appealing to the largest amount of women at once. Articles centred around the problems faced by women in industry. Money advice and tales of financial woes played a huge part, as more women were navigating the working world than ever before. Tips on how to

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juggle work while raising children often appeared, and themes on organising childcare and creating a work-life balance were common. Some more daring women’s magazines even began to question the values of marriage at a young age, and even the place of women in society. Magazines served as useful guides, helping young women navigate new societal norms. Many publications have since become symbols of the second-wave feminist movement, most notably Spare Rib, as they strove to challenge stereotypes and supported collective solutions. No longer held back by the patriarchal norms, they began to reflect women’s true feelings.

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“ LOSE 5 POUNDS IN 5 DAYS WITH OUR NEW BLITZ DIET!” Madamoiselle, May 2000.

1990–2009

Another massive shift in the format of women’s magazines took place in the 20 years from 1990 to 2010. Moving away from cover girls that were seen as ‘ordinary’ women, they began to focus on the awesome selling power of a celebrity face. Top-selling women’s magazines; such as Glamour and Grazia always had a famous face on the front cover. Certain celebrity faces shift more copies than others, for example Kate Moss shifted more copies of Vogue than, say, Natalie Portman. Since the Nineties, the cover formula for selling women’s magazines on news-stands hasn’t changed much. Along with plastering celebrity faces on their front covers, magazines in this era began to turn to rhetoric that was much more toxic than before. The emphasis moved away from family and the home, and instead shifted towards diet

and the body. Huge pressure was put on readers to achieve the ideal figure, and they were often shamed for being modest overweight, unstylish and frumpy. Researchers have investigated the relationship between magazine use and body satisfaction, and concluded that women who were exposed to media images of thin models were more dissatisfied with their bodies than those who weren’t. The pressure of our societal standards led to eating disorders and crippling self-esteem issues. This ‘Thin Ideal’ was most perpetuated by women’s magazines, and had an extremely negative effect on their readers, who were largely young and impressionable. The general obsession with fashion, celebrity, and fitness lowered women’s satisfaction with their own bodies, as they compared themselves to an unattainable ideal. In this era, the concept

A Woman’s Place

1990–2009

“CHILDREN— ARE YOU REALLY SURE YOU WANT THEM?” Cosmopolitan, May 1990.

of photoshopping or editing images of women arose in earnest. Models’ faces and bodies were digitally manipulated to make them align with the beauty standard; giving them perfect skin, hair and silhouettes. Of course, because technology was still relatively new, most consumers had no idea what they were seeing was an over enhanced version of reality, and as a result, they often held themselves up against this impossible standard. Despite these drawbacks, women’s magazines retained their popularity. 35% of women were loyal readers who bought the same magazine every month. Magazines provided an imagined community of other women readers who shared common experiences and interests. The wider acceptance of individualism and liberal feminism gave rise to a ‘selfism’ discourse; with magazines

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often asserting a woman’s right to ‘me-time’ and self-indulgence. Many of the battles for equality in the workplace and in the home were seen to have been won, and attention turned to the women who juggled their traditional roles as mothers and home-makers while also working. They needed to unwind from the demands of their day-to-day responsibilities, both in the home and in the workplace. The right to individual space has always been a problematic concept for women, and the notion of ‘me-time’ conflicted with the dominant idea of femininity. This idea contradicted the traditional view that women are conditioned to be nurturing and familial, whereas men are conditioned to be autonomous. These publications captured cultural change in articles on women acting ‘rebelliously’, or choosing to focus on their career.

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“ WOULD YOU GO TOPLESS TO GET A PAYRISE?” Cosmopolitan, November 2013.

1990–2009

Over the last 15 years, women’s magazines have become more progressive than ever— yet they’re closing down at an unprecedented rate. It seems that print is now officially dead, and the inexorable ‘pivot to digital’ is now complete. Social media has had a huge effect on all types of print media, and women’s magazines are no different. Every few months another titan falls, with print editions of Marie Claire, More!, and InStyle being phased out. Glamour came to the same conclusion reached by so many other magazines— after 80 years, it went digital in 2017 and stopped publishing its glossy monthly in 2019. Across the board, giants of women’s publishing are facing massive drops in consumers. Cosmopolitan saw its print circulation drop by a third in the last half of 2018, while weeklies Woman and Woman’s

Own were down 20% and 19% respectively. Now magazine dropped by 43%. Seventeen, once a lifestyle primer for schoolgirls everywhere, now will publish only special issues, and Redbook, one of the ‘Seven Sisters’ of magazines for suburban housewives, is high-tailing it to the Web as well. The demise of the popular women’s magazines would once have been met with jubilation by some feminists. Although they were a safe space for women in popular media, they were often a toxic one— the circling of celebrity cellulite and the reinforcement of white beauty standards only further entrenched misogyny. However, this is not a representation of modern women’s magazines. The closure of Teen Vogue’s print publication was met with widespread outrage, as the magazine had matured into a politically engaged tome for

A Woman’s Place

2010–Present

“OWN YOUR BODY, YOUR HAPPINESS, YOUR FUTURE.” Glamour, February 2017.

young readers who still cared about fashion, but also had concerns over the climate crisis and rise of far-right ideology in the West. Although glossy magazines are the worst affected, online women’s publications have not escaped – the Debrief and Pool suffered the same fate. The current purge is happening at a time when women’s magazines are less sexist and more progressive than they ever have been. Last year’s September issues made history with virtually every one featuring a black cover star. Some may argue that change came too late, but even magazines that only ever had a feminist agenda haven’t been immune. Quick-witted British iterations such as Standard Issue and Motherland have also folded. What is happening currently is simply a reflection of an industry-wide problem. In a media landscape

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that tends to characterise interests generally associated with men as “news” while women’s issues are shoehorned into “lifestyle” pullouts and supplements, their absence is keenly felt and their presence still very much needed. The magazine industry as a whole has been belt-tightening thanks to a print advertising famine, eliminating costly paper copies while trying to establish themselves on the Internet. Yet women’s publications somehow feel much more endangered than the rest, especially now that even the woke upstarts that once aimed to replace them — sites like Hairpin, Rookie and Toast — are themselves turning off the lights. These publications helped mold tastes, define mainstream femininity and also give talented female journalists a leg up into media careers.

THE DEATH of the DOMESTIC GODDESS

As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, our outlook on how a household should run has changed entirely. No longer stuck in a stuffy cycle of heteronormativity, our families, our relationships and even our homes themselves are now a world away from their Victorian predecessors. Our final section discusses the impact Household Management has had on the world today. How has a woman’s place in the home changed since the book’s publication? Does a 160-year-old book bear any relevance in our modern world?

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The Gentlewoman, A/W 2021

A Woman’s Place

Voices of the Next Generation

VOICES OF

LAVANYA RAMANATHAN

In the past 12 months we’ve seen the list of the most exciting independent magazines celebrating women expand at a truly astonishing rate, as distinct, under-represented voices from all corners of the world landed in our hands. So for our very first publication, we’ve decided to celebrate this growing community by presenting you with a list of our top new women’s magazines, as well as those titles that've impressed us over the past few years. These are the titles that are helping to shape the growing public discourses on real the importance of diversity and inclusion, and if you like our selection, be sure to check out our website to find a subscription service, where we aim to curate a independent magazine list for people who want something good to read. It will be renewed and updated each month.

01. The Gentlewoman, London

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The Gentlewoman is a women’s magazine that aimed to herald a new atmosphere for female personal style, along with journalism of the very highest quality. Their magazine has challenged the format of female personal style with a more sophisticated and in-depth oriented content. With its intelligence, quick wit and independent eye the magazine offers something entirely new to its readership. Something the women’s publication market has long been missing. The readers are more ambitious, confident, well-travelled and proud of their financial independence, with also have a deep love of fashion, which they can display through their own personal style. The Gentlewoman celebrates modern women of style and purpose. Its fabulous biannual magazine offers us an intelligent and fresh perspective on fashion that’s focused on personal style – the way women actually look, think and dress in their day-to-day lives. Featuring ambitious journalism and photography of the highest quality, it proudly showcases inspirational women through its nowdistinctive combination of glamour, personality and warmth. Penny Martin is editor-in-chief, and her magazine is a flag-bearer for contemporary independent publishing and offers an alternative to the main market of women’s magazines.

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02. Sukeban, London

05. Mary Review, Brooklyn

In Japanese, Sukeban means ‘delinquent girl’ or ‘boss girl’, and their website and print magazine holds strong to this ethos. Created as a space to support women in the creative industries, it aims to help individuals find other like-minded females they want to work with by offering place for them to collaborate with other women. Founders Erika Bowes and Yuki Haze are known for their unique, distinctive and unapologetic style, which makes sense as the theme of their first issue was ‘The Outlaw’. Keep your eye out for issue two, due out later this month.

The first launch issue of feminist magazine Mary Review completely won our hearts with its diverse storytelling and inclusivity. From a photo series of working mums, to sexism in the trucking industry and a pop star creating patriotic anthems for the people at war in Iraqi Kurdistan, its new narratives come embedded with a thoughtful curiosity for the often unnoticed and overlooked women out in the wider world. You can read some of these articles on their site, and support their writing by ordering a print copy.

03. Womankind, Tasmania

06. Sabat, London

From the publishers of the magazine the New Philosopher, Womankind is a quarterly magazine focused on mainly on self, identity and meaning. Each issue offers commentary and reportage on culture, philosophy, nature, and creativity, and it aims to give readers encouragement on living the most meaningful life for them. Their most recent issue explores balancing self-acceptance and ambition, questions the gender gap in medical research, and asks writers to try out a five-day advertising-free challenge. Its best enjoyed in a thoughtful way— they even have their own line of ethically-sourced tea for the occasion.

A magazine for the modern witch, Sabat magazine is a favourite in our community. Our experience of the magazine’s hidden designs, and the interview with the founder Elisabeth Krohn have surely been some of the most read articles amongst our crew. But we’re not surprised— Sabat's issues explore feminine empowerment and interesting design just as much as modern witchcraft and the occult, making it an intriguing magazine and a spellbound read that'll leave you wanting more. For those who are curious about the realm of witchery, they are set to launch their third and final ‘Crone’ issue later this month, and we personally can't wait.

04. BBY, Gothenburg

07. Girl's Club, London

BBY is a feminist magazine born out of a desire to change the male-dominated institutions of design and art. Published out of Sweden, it wants to counter the long tradition of men supporting other men, by lifting other women up. We spoke to the editors about their next issue, which gives a brashly tongue-in-cheek examination on the now-glamourised notion of interior design, and includes features like ways to style a home with products found at the pound shop. They aim to explore the power of self-representation by way of social media, as part of a mission to support and promote female artists and writers.

In its small, staple-bound format, Girls Club is reminiscent of DIY zines of the punk era. But its writing, photography and illustrations are of top quality, and with a refreshing, humorous attitude, it’s one of the titles propelling the wider feminist magazine movement. Their most recent ‘Quarter Life Crisis’ issue took a wry look at the millennial phenomenon with honest and forgiving charm. It has a wonderful sense of contrast, between its homemade feel and provocative storytelling. Its really a time capsule of what it’s like to be a 20-something girl today. This witty, emotional, hilarious and also genuinely useful collection of submissions reflects real experiences.

A Woman’s Place

Voices of the Next Generation

08. Gal-Dem, London Gal-dem’s website is a new source of intelligent, thought-provoking essays on the lives of women of colour; a welcome alternative that platforms under-represented modern voices. When we heard they were launching a print magazine, we knew it was going to be something special. Their first issue was themed ‘gal-hood’, andincluded a mix of features, interviews and opinion pieces tackling topics of sisterhood, the body, sex, age, growth, and more. It’s an intimate and inspiring read, and it sold like hot cakes so look out for the second issue due out this year.

09. Girls Like Us, Brussels In a tiny pocketable format, Girls Like Us aims to pack art, culture and activism into its diminutive little pages. Through personal stories, essays and praiseworthy graphic design, the magazine puts questions about future ways of living and sharing in front of readers. Their latest issue looked at ‘family’ — collectives, collaborations, friendship, and support structures. It turns the spotlight on an international expanding community of women and transpeople within arts, culture and activism. Through personal stories, essays and vanguard visuals, Girls Like Us mixes politics with pleasure, mapping routes towards a non-patriarchy.

10. Ladybeard, London We’re rounding out our list with Ladybeard, a magazine that was on last year’s list but deserves a second shout out. They picked up a Stack Award for their second issue. Their ‘sex’ and ‘mind’ issues explored much-needed female perspectives that are simply not represented in traditional women’s media — you’ll find enlightening investigation on things you debate about with your close friends. Their third issue on ‘beauty’ is due out later this year, and submissions for it are now open, so be sure to get involved! Taking the glossy magazine as a point of departure, Ladybeard is a space to play with gender, sexuality and identity, rather than dictate their terms.

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“ WHERE WOULD WE BE WITHOUT THE NOBLE AND UNAPPRECIATED MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE? OH, THE WORK PERFORMED BY THESE

14–HOUR WIVES OF

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A Woman’s Place

Note

TO OUR READERS We hope this issue first of A Woman’s Place has opened your eyes to the wonderful world of both Isabella Beeton, and the history of female publishing in general. A spirit and a symbol, Beeton inspired generations of women to be proud of the work they did in the home. She was a true pioneer of women’s publishing. We have also striven to show the impact of women’s magazines on popular culture in the past 150 years. These publications were unique in that they focused on women as a worthwhile audience, and despite assumptions that they were ‘lesser’ for their feminine appeal, they continued to persevere. Magazines provided a sense of sisterhood for women all over the world, and also opened up a discourse around women’s roles in society. Despite this, at times they also fed into harmful patriarchal norms, and often held up conservative beliefs. However, women’s magazines still serve as artefacts that capture the huge changes in women’s history that took place since Our next edition will centre on other titans of Victorian literature; the Bronte sisters. Their outstanding works of fiction appealed to the masses, and created a worldwide appetite for female stories. A Woman’s Place Issue No. 2 will be on news-stands and all digital platforms in January 2023.

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A Woman’s Place

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY A History of Publishing. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020. Bad Language for Nasty Women. Chi Luu, 2016. Beeton and the Art of Household Management. British Library, 2014. Birthing Terrible Beauties: Women’s Magazines. Economic and Political Weekly, 1991. Cover Girls: 300 Years of Women’s Magazines. Esther Walker, The Independent, 2008. Man, I Feel Like a 1960s Woman. Rosita Boland, the Irish Times, 2014. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Oxford University Press, 2000. Beeton’s Challenge to Traditional Domesticity. Chisato Yamada, 2010. Perceived Reality of Women in Magazines. Marquette University, 2011. The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. Victorian Periodical Review, 2008. The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton. HarperCollins, 2005. Women, Men, and Type of Talk. Language in Society, 1996. Women’s Magazines: An Interdisciplinary Lens. American Periodicals, 2015. Women’s Magazines Are Dying Lavanya Ramanathan, the Washington Post, 2019. Zeal and Softness: Women’s Magazines Down the Ages. Kathryn Hughes, the Guardian, December 2008. 150 Years of Women’s Magazines. University of Cambridge, 2017.

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A Woman’s Place is a magazine created by women, for women. Inspired by one of the first female publications; Beeton’s Book of Household Management, we aim to produce 24 issues that centre on the history of women’s publishing. Our magazine has chosen to shed light on women’s voices and stories, rather than their appearance. For this reason, A Woman’s Place focuses on words, not images. For too long, magazines have been too obsessed with women’s bodies and looks, and in doing so, their messages are lost and their voices are silenced. This, our first issue, is an ode to the inspiration behind our magazine; the marvellous Mrs. Beeton.

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