Focusing on the historical development of the British women's magazine, this book begins with descriptions of different kinds of magazines. This is followed by an exploration of elements that made up the mix of ingredients and a comprehensive listing.

Ledbetter explores themes and patterns of poetry publication in a variety of women's periodicals published throughout the Victorian era using taste, style and the significance of poetry to advance our understanding of women's lives in the nineteenth century.

Presents 35 thematically organised, research-led essays on women, periodicals and print culture in Victorian Britain.

Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture, and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law. Through a close examination of literature, memoirs, letters, domestic magazines, and political debates, Marcus reveals how relationships between women were a crucial component of femininity. Deeply researched, powerfully argued, and filled with original readings of familiar and surprising sources, Between Women overturns everything we thought we knew about Victorian women and the history of marriage and family life. It offers a new paradigm for theorizing gender and sexuality--not just in the Victorian period, but in our own.

Table of contents

“Meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated . . . indispensable to anyone interested in the era.” —Tasha Alexander, New York Times–bestselling author of the Lady Emily series What did a Victorian lady wear for a walk in the park? How did she style her hair for an evening at the theater? And what products might she have used to soothe a sunburn or treat an unsightly blemish? USA Today-bestselling author Mimi Matthews answers these questions and more as she takes readers on a decade-by-decade journey through Victorian fashion and beauty history. Women’s clothing changed dramatically during the course of the Victorian era. Necklines rose, waistlines dropped, and Gothic severity gave way to flounces and frills. Sleeves ballooned up and skirts billowed out. The crinoline morphed into the bustle and steam-molded corsets cinched women’s waists ever tighter. As fashion evolved, so too did trends in ladies’ hair care and cosmetics. An era which began by prizing natural, barefaced beauty ended with women purchasing lip and cheek rouge, false hairpieces and pomades, and fashionable perfumes. Using research from nineteenth-century beauty books, fashion magazines, and lady’s journals, the author of the Parish Orphans of Devon series brings Victorian fashion into modern day focus—and offers a glimpse of the social issues that influenced women’s clothing and the outrage that was a frequent response to those bold females who used fashion and beauty to assert their individuality and independence. “An elegant resource that I will be reaching for again and again.”—Deanna Raybourn, New York Times-bestselling author of the Veronica Speedwell novels

The article offers a first exploration of the contribution of women's magazines to mid-Victorian historical culture. Distinguished by a special heterogeneity in form and content, magazines showcase the diversity of historical culture and highlight its contested positions and contradictions. The tensions between conservative ideals and progressive alternatives that marked the debate about the "woman question" also characterise Victorian approaches to women's history. This is shown for a sample of middle-class women's magazines published between 1850 and 1880: the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, the Ladies' Treasury and the Queen, all three being market-leading publications, and, for comparison, the feminist English Woman's Journal. It will be asked what areas of history the magazines address, how they utilise these areas to negotiate the social position of women as well as models of femininity, and how their presentation of history relates to dominant male-biased strands of historiography.