Victorian Women's Magazines

This anthology makes available to students and general readers the rich variety of Victorian magazines for women. The extracts range from fashion magazines to feminist journals, from serious works for Christian mothers to tales of romance and passion for sweethearts. Focusing on the historical development of the British womens magazine, this extensively illustrated work gives access to texts which few readers ever see. The first main section describes and illustrates eight kinds of magazine for women. Though they have common features, the differences between the drawing room journal of the 1830s and 1840s and the cheap domestic magazines of the 1890s are clearly demonstrated. The second section focuses on those elements which made up the magazines typical mix of ingredients, including fiction, the fashion plate, poetry, political journalism, advice columns and readers letters. The last section is the most comprehensive listing of British Victorian womens magazines which currently exists. This is a work of scholarship but one which will appeal to students of Cultural, Historical, Literary and Womens Studies, as well as to the general interested reader. Like the magazines it represents, it offers its readers both entertainment and instruction. -- .