Rachel Ritchie is an Associate Research Fellow at Brunel University London.

Sue Hawkins teaches 19th-century British social history at Kingston University London.

Nicola Phillips is a Gender Historian and Co-Director of the Bedford Centre for the History of Women and the MA in Public History at Royal Holloway, University of London.

S. Jay Kleinberg is a Professor Emerita at Brunel University London and Chair of the Society for the History of Women in the Americas.

Women have been important contributors to and readers of magazines since the development of the periodical press in the 19th century. By the mid-20th century, millions read the weeklies and monthlies that focused on the home, family and appearance. These publications have been criticized as conservative, even regressive in their treatment of gender norms and ideals. This perspective obscures the heterogeneity of the magazine industry itself and women's experiences of it, both as readers and as journalists. This collection highlights the differing, and at times contradictory, images and understandings of women in a range of magazines, from the 19th century to the present.

Introduction Rachel Ritchie, Sue Hawkins, Nicola Phillips and S. Jay Kleinberg Part I: Thinking About Women's Magazines 1. Fragmentation and Inclusivity: Methods for Working with Girls' and Women's Magazines Penny Tinkler 2. Landscape for a Good Woman's Weekly: Finding Magazines in Post-War British History and Culture Tracey Loughran Part II: Ideals of Femininity and Negotiating Gender Norms 3. Gender, Reproduction and the Fight for Free Love in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press Sarah Jones 4. Inter-War Czech Women's Magazines: Constructing Gender, Consumer Culture and Identity in Central Europe Karla Huebner 5. Make Any Occasion a Special Event: Hospitality, Domesticity and Female Cordial Consumption in Magazine Advertising, 1950-1969 Rochelle Pereira-Alvares 6. Righting Women in the 1960s: Gender, Power and Conservatism in the Pages of The New Guard Sinead McEneaney Part III: Women, Magazines and Employment 7. Getting a Living, Getting a Life: Leonora Eyles, Employment and Agony, 1925-1930 Fiona Hackney 8. "Corresponding with Men": Exploring the Significance of Constance Maynard's Magazine Writing, 1913-1920 Gretchen Galbraith 9. The Married Woman Worker in Chatelaine Magazine, 1948-1964 Helen Glew 10. Nanny Knows Best?: Tensions in Nanny Employment in Early and Mid-Twentieth-Century British Childcare Magazines Katherine Holden Part IV: Young Women in Magazines 11. The American Girl: Ideas of Nationalism and Sexuality as Promoted in the Ladies' Home Journal during the Early Twentieth Century Cheyanne Cortez 12. A Taste of Honey: Get-Ahead Femininity in 1960s Britain Fan Carter Part V: Women's Bodies from Second Wave Feminism to the Twenty-First Century 13. Popular Feminism and the Second Wave: Women's Liberation, Sexual Liberation and Cleo Magazine Megan Le Masurier 14. How Ladies' Home Journal Covered Second Wave Health, 1969-1975 Amanda Hinnant 15. Beauty Trade and the Rise of American Black Hair Magazines Carina Spaulding