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 and 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.

Typical of the late Georgian and Regency magazines in Britain were The Lady’s Magazine (1770), a sixpenny monthly that, along with its literary contributions and fashion notes, gave away embroidery patterns and sheet music; The Lady’s Monthly Museum (1798), which had a half-yearly “Cabinet of Fashion” illustrated by coloured engravings, the first to appear in a women’s periodical; and La Belle Assemblée (1806), which encouraged its readers to unburden themselves in its correspondence columns. These three merged in 1832, the first instance of what was to become a common occurrence, but ceased publication in 1847. Later women’s magazines included The Ladies’ Pocket Magazine (1824–40), The Ladies’ Cabinet (1832–52), The New Monthly Belle Assemblée (1847–70), and The Ladies’ Treasury (1857–95). All contained verse, fiction, and articles of high moral tone but low intellectual content. There were attempts to swim against the tide, such as The Female’s Friend (1846), which was one of the first periodicals to espouse women’s rights, but they seldom lasted long.

In 1852 a wider market began to be tapped by The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, a monthly issued by Samuel Beeton at twopence instead of the usual one shilling; it was also the first women’s periodical to concentrate on home management and offer practical advice to women rather than provide entertainment for the idle. Beeton’s wife (author of the classic Book of Household Management, 1861) visited Paris regularly and acquired fashion plates from Adolphe Goubaud’s Moniteur de la Mode. A feature of Beeton’s magazine was the “Practical Dress Instructor,” a forerunner of the paper dressmaking pattern. In 1861, Beeton followed up his success with The Queen, a weekly newspaper of more topical character.

The great expansion of women’s magazines into a major industry may be dated in Britain from Myra’s Journal of Dress and Fashion (1875–1912) and Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal (1875–1954), both of which supplied dressmaking patterns and met the needs of a mass readership. Several new quality magazines were started, such as The Lady (founded 1885) and The Gentlewoman (1890–1926), one of the first to acknowledge the financial necessity of advertisements, but there were many more cheap weeklies, such as Home Notes (1894–1957), Home Chat (1895–1958), and Home Companion (1897–1956); these were of great help in teaching women about hygiene, nutrition, and child care.

Among the earliest women’s magazines in the United States was a monthly published in Philadelphia called Godey’s Lady’s Book (1830–98), which employed up to 150 women to hand-tint its fashion plates. Of the early national magazines, one of the best and hardiest was Harper’s Bazar (1867; Harper’s Bazaar after 1929), modeled on a Berlin women’s periodical, Der Bazar, from which it obtained its fashion material. The practical trend was begun in 1863 by Ebenezer Butterick, who devised the tissue-paper clothing pattern and, to popularize it, brought out the Ladies’ Quarterly Review of Broadway Fashions and, later, Metropolitan. These merged in 1873 into the Delineator, which had a highly successful career until 1937. The field of women’s magazines was finally transformed, however, by Cyrus Curtis with his Ladies’ Home Journal (founded 1883), edited by his wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis. This soon reached a circulation of 400,000 and, under the editorship of Edward W. Bok, from 1889, broke with sentimentality and piety to become a stimulating journal of real service to women. Other popular magazines were Ladies’ Home Companion (1886; called Woman’s Home Companion, 1897–1957), McCall’s Magazine (founded 1897), and Pictorial Review (1899–1939). Two requiring special mention were Good Housekeeping (founded 1885), which established a testing station for consumer goods early in the 20th century, and Vogue (founded 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 backers.

Literary and scientific magazines

The critical review developed strongly in the 19th century, often as an adjunct to a book-publishing business. It became a forum for the questions of the day—political, literary, and artistic—to which many great figures contributed. There were also many magazines with a literary flavour, and these serialized some of the best fiction of the period. A few marked the beginning of specialization—e.g., in science.

Britain was particularly rich in reviews, beginning with the Edinburgh Review (1802–1929), founded by a trio of gifted young critics: Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham, and Sydney Smith. The high and independent tone they adopted was said by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to mark an “epoch in periodical criticism.” Though Tories, including at first Sir Walter Scott, wrote for it, the Edinburgh Review gradually became increasingly Whig in attitude. Scott accordingly transferred his allegiance to the Quarterly Review (1809–1967), the Edinburgh Review’s Tory rival, founded by the London publisher John Murray and first edited by William Gifford. Gifford had previously edited The Anti-Jacobin (1797–98), with which such figures as the Tory statesman George Canning were associated. In opposition to these, and more political than any of them, was the Westminster Review (1824–1914), started by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill as an organ of the philosophical radicals. Two other early reviews were the Athenaeum (1828–1921), an independent literary weekly, and the Spectator (founded 1828), a nonpartisan but conservative-leaning political weekly that nonetheless supported parliamentary reform and the cause of the North in the American Civil War. Later reviews included the Saturday Review (1855–1938), which had George Bernard Shaw and Max Beerbohm as drama critics (1895–1910); the Fortnightly Review (1865–1954), which had the Liberal statesman John Morley as editor (1867–83); the Contemporary Review (founded 1866); the Nineteenth Century (1877; later the Twentieth Century, until it closed in 1974); and W.T. Stead’s Review of Reviews (1890–1936), a more limited version of Reader’s Digest.

Of the closely related literary magazines, one of the earliest and best was Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1817–1981), founded by a book publisher, William Blackwood, as a rival to the Edinburgh Review, but a less ponderous one than the Quarterly. It provoked in turn the founding of the London Magazine (1820–29), in which Charles Lamb’s Essays first appeared. The rivalry between these two publications led to a duel in which John Scott, the first editor of the London Magazine, was mortally wounded. Other literary periodicals included the Examiner (1808–80), edited by the radical essayist Leigh Hunt, who introduced the poetry of Shelley and Keats to the public through its columns; the New Monthly Magazine (1814–84); Bentley’s Miscellany (1837), which had Dickens as its first editor and Oliver Twist as one of its serials; and the Cornhill (1860–1975), first edited by William Thackeray and the first magazine of its kind to reach a circulation of 100,000. Finally, two rather different periodicals must be mentioned: Nature (founded 1869), which began to make scientific ideas more widely known and to which Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley contributed; and Punch (founded 1841), which provided a weekly humorous comment on British life illustrated by many distinguished draftsmen.

Continental European reviews tended to be more literary than political, perhaps because of the persistence of censorship. The most notable in France were the Revue des Deux Mondes (founded 1829; later La Nouvelle Revue des Deux Mondes), with such contributors as Victor Hugo and the critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and its rival the (Nouvelle) Revue de Paris (founded 1829), which published authors disapproved of by the other, notably Gustave Flaubert. In Germany, F.A. Brockhaus, the book publisher, tried to emulate the Edinburgh Review with Hermes (1819–31) but had more success with Literarisches Wochenblatt (1820–98). Two later reviews were the conservative Deutsche Rundschau (founded 1874) and the liberal Freie Bühne (1890). Two influential Italian reviews were the Nuova Antologia (founded 1866) and La Cultura (1881–1935).

The early literary magazines in the United States included, among many others often of more local interest, the Philadelphia Literary Magazine (1803–08); the Monthly Anthology (Boston, 1803–11), which became the quarterly North American Review (1815–1940), with a host of famous contributors; the New York Monthly Magazine (1824); Dial (1840–44), the organ of the New England essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendental Club (there was a second, literary Dial, 1880–1929); and De Bow’s Review (New Orleans, 1846–80). The cultured weekly Home Journal (1846–1901; then continuing as Town and Country) introduced Swinburne and Balzac to Americans, while Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (New York City, 1850; later called Harper’s Magazine), founded by the book-publishing Harper brothers, serialized many of the great British novels and became one of America’s finest quality magazines. It was rivaled only by the Atlantic (Boston, 1857; later called Atlantic Monthly), which had a long line of distinguished editors, beginning with James Russell Lowell, and published most of the great American writers, from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes onward; it seemed to enjoy “a perpetual state of literary grace.” Similar in quality was Scribner’s Monthly (1870), which became the Century (1881–1930) but was restarted as Scribner’s Magazine (1887–1939). A fine magazine in the Far West was Overland Monthly (San Francisco, 1868–1935), first edited by Bret Harte. Non-literary specialized magazines included Scientific American, which was founded in 1845 by Rufus Porter, a talented inventor whose magazine encouraged other inventors; Popular Science Monthly, which was founded in 1872, to spread scientific knowledge and which had the philosophers William James and John Dewey among its contributors; and the ever-popular National Geographic Magazine, founded in 1888 and published ever since by the National Geographic Society, which used some of the proceeds to sponsor scientific expeditions.