˜Theœ Lady's Magazine (1770-1832) and the making of literary history

## The first major study of one of the most influential periodicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries * Provides the first major study of one of the most influential periodicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries * Interrogates and revises critical commonplaces and narratives about form, authorship, reading and gender through rigorous archival research on the magazine’s authors, readers, printers and publishers * Maps new directions in eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, women’s writing, and media and cultural history by modelling innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies for historical periodical studies * Moves the women’s magazine from the periphery to the centre of eighteenth-century and Romantic print culture In December 1840, Charlotte Brontë wrote in a letter to Hartley Coleridge that she wished ‘with all [her] heart’ that she ‘had been born in time to contribute to the Lady’s magazine’. Nearly two centuries later, the cultural and literary importance of a monthly publication that for six decades championed women’s reading and women’s writing has yet to be documented. This book offers the first sustained account of __The Lady’s Magazine__. Across six chapters devoted to the publication’s eclectic and evolving contents, as well as its readers and contributors, __The Lady’s Magazine (1770–1832) and the Making of Literary History__ illuminates the periodical’s achievements and influence, and reveals what this vital period of literary history looks like when we see it anew through the lens of one of its most long-lived and popular publications. Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Origins: The Birth of the Women’s Magazine 2. Beginnings: The Making of the Lady’s Magazine (1770–2) 3. Modes, Media and Miscellaneity: The Contents of the Lady’s Magazine 4. Authors, Readers, Writing Cultures 5. Rivals: The Changing Face of the Women’s Magazine 6. Achievements and Legacies: The Lady’s Magazine in Literary History Afterword Notes Select Bibliography Index