by Technological and social advances beginning in the eighteenth century led to a boom in periodical publishing in the late eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries. Newly literate audiences, like middle-class white women, were specifically targeted due to their roles as the primary purchasers of the household goods and products advertised in the magazines. The American women’s periodical, Peterson’s Magazine (1842-1892), emerged as one of the cheaper alternatives within this vast market, eventually becoming the largest circulating women’s magazine at its height in 1866. The magazine focused on its readers’ domestic and consumer lives by including articles and illustrations on the latest in fashion, crafts, recipes, as well as music, poetry, and literature. Each issue concluded with the contact information for the magazine’s purchasing agent, so that subscribers could order the goods they had just read about.
While women’s magazines disseminated content centered on women’s roles as caregivers, wives, and homekeepers, they also created socially acceptable professional opportunities for women. As writers and editors, women like Ann S. Stephens were able to influence magazine content directly by promoting the works of other famous American women authors like Frances Hodgson Burnett, E.D.E.N Southworth, Rebecca Harding Davis, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and Louise Chandler Moulton. Despite their inclusion, most women’s magazines, like Peterson’s, generally reinforced stereotypical gender roles and expectations while financially benefiting their male owners. Excerpts from Special Collections’ issues of Peterson’s Magazine (1866, 1870, 1880, and 1882) can be seen below.
