List of 18th-century British periodicals for women

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "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."^[1] Here follows a list of some of the major British periodicals marketed to women in the period. Between them they cover a wide range of material, from Augustan periodical essays,^[2] to advice,^[3] to mathematical puzzles,^[4] to fashion.^[5] Some were written and edited by women and others by men. In many cases, both editorship and individual authorship is obscure.

Periodicals marketed to women

• The Ladies' Mercury (27 February 1693 – 17 March 1693): weekly; 4 issues
• The Ladies' Diary: or, Woman's Almanack (1704–1841): annually
• The Female Tatler (8 July 1709 – 31 March 1710): thrice weekly; 115 issues
• The Female Spectator (1744–1746): monthly; 24 issues; edited/written by Eliza Haywood
• The Ladies magazine or, the Universal entertainer (1749–1753)^[6]
• The Lady's Museum (1760–1761): monthly; edited/written by Charlotte Lennox
• The Lady's Magazine; or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement, (1770–1832): monthly; merged with The Lady's Monthly Museum in 1832 and La Belle Assemblée in 1837
• The Lady's Monthly Museum; Or, Polite Repository of Amusement and Instruction (1798–1832): monthly; merged with The Lady's Magazine in 1832 and La Belle Assemblée in 1837

Notable contributions by women to general periodicals

• Analytical Review (1788 to 1798): Mary Wollstonecraft
• The Athenian Mercury (1690–1697): Elizabeth Singer Rowe
• The Examiner (1710–1714): Delarivier Manley
• The Gentleman's Magazine (1731–1922): Mary Barber; Anna Eliza Bray; Susanna Highmore; Laetitia Pilkington
• The Monthly Mirror (1795 to 1811): Eliza Kirkham Mathews
• Monthly Review (1749–1845): Anna Letitia Barbauld; Elizabeth Moody

Images

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  The Ladies Mercury, February 27, 1693

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  "The Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Row," The Gentleman's Magazine (May 1739)

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  Frontispiece to The Female Spectator, London: 1746, by Eliza Haywood

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  Title page, The Female Spectator 3rd ed. Vol. I, Dublin, 1747

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  The Lady's Magazine, 1 August 1770

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  Image of mathematical solution, The Ladies' Diary, 1779

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  Cover, The Ladies' Diary, 1787

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  Fashion Plate: Morning dress, The Lady's Monthly Museum, Sept. 1798

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  Fashion Plate: Afternoon dress, The Lady's Monthly Museum, May 1800

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  Title page from La Belle Assemblée or, Bell's court and fashionable magazine Volume III, 1807

Notes

1. "Women's magazines," Britannica.com.
2. See The Female Spectator.
3. See The Ladies' Mercury.
4. See The Ladies' Diary: or, Woman's Almanack.
5. See The Lady's Monthly Museum.
6. Wellcome Collection

See also

• The August essay/journalism
• History of women's magazines
• List of 18th-century British periodicals
• List of defunct women's magazines

Further reading

• Adburgham, Alison. Women in print: writing women and women's magazines from the Restoration to the accession of Victoria. London: Allen and Unwin, 1972. ISBN 0040700054
• Batchelor, Jennie, and Manushag N. Powell, eds. Women's periodicals and print culture in Britain, 1690-1820s: the long eighteenth century. Edinburgh University Press, 2018. ISBN 9781474419659
• Berry, Helen. Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Athenian Mercury. Taylor & Francis, 2017. ISBN 9781351934398, ISBN 1351934392
• Clery, E. The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England: Literature, Commerce and Luxury. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ISBN 9780230509047, ISBN 0230509045
• Conboy, Martin. Journalism: A Critical History. SAGE Publications2004. ISBN 9781446224915, ISBN 1446224910
• Maurer, Shawn L. Proposing men: dialectics of gender and class in the eighteenth-century English periodical. Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0804733538