The Lady's Magazine (1770-1832) and the Making of Literary History - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism) by Jennie Batchelor (Paperback)

About the Book

The first major study of one of the most influential periodicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

The first major study of one of the most influential periodicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 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. Jennie Batchelor is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Kent.

Review Quotes

One cannot help but admire the convincing and detailed discussion of so many facets of this protean periodical. Batchelor seems have ferreted out every detail and every contributor, even the most elusive, to construct her argument in favor of appreciating the magazine's role in the period. This monograph is an exemplary work of scholarship. One might add that the prose and the argument are engaging and well supplied with illustrations, even as the Lady's Magazine was.--James Najarian, Boston College "European Romantic Review"

Jennie Batchelor's tour de force scholarship on this crucial Anglophone women's periodical upends critical assumptions about genre, readership and meaning. Batchelor's expertise in the "unRomantic" Lady's Magazine - a vast literary collection in and of itself - is unrivalled. This is a level of periodical scholarship not seen for decades; a triumph.

--Manushag N. Powell, Purdue University

[...] this is an exemplary work of scholarship which certainly enriches our understanding of women's writing and literary history.--Jock Macleod, Griffith University "Review19"

About the Author

Jennie Batchelor is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Kent. She has published widely on eighteenth-century women's writing, material culture, gender, sexuality and the body and women's periodicals. Her most recent books include Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690s-1820s, co-edited with Manushag N. Powell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and Women's Work: Labour, Gender, Authorship, 1750-1830 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). She also co-devised (with Alison Larkin) the popular history/craft book Jane Austen Embroidery (London: Pavilion 2020), which reprints and contextualises 15 needlework projects from the Lady's Magazine for modern stitchers.