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The Lady's Monthly Museum

The Lady's Monthly Museum
The Lady's Monthly Museum
The Lady's Monthly Museum was launched in 1798 by a society of ladies and included illustrations like these from the 'Cabinet of Fashion' as well as literature and theatre reviews, letters to the editor, poetry, articles on female historical figures such as Lady Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots and 'charades' (or poetic riddles). It was rather wonderfully subtitled, a 'Polite Repository of Amusement and Instruction: Being an assemblage of whatever can tend to please the Fancy, interest the Mind, or exalt the Character of The British Fair'.

Women's magazines have changed over the years with the changing ideas of women's role in society. In the 18th century, women's magazines were stimulating as women participated in social and political life. Then in the 19th century when domesticity was idealised, women's magazines became rather more lacklustre. In the late 1800s, women's magazines started to broaden their outlook again.

Along with The Lady's Magazine and La Belle Assemblee, The Lady's Monthly Museum was typical of late Georgian and Regency era magazines in Britain. The three titles merged in 1832, but publication ended in 1847. They were superseded by titles such as The Ladies' Pocket Magazine, The Female's Friend, Home Chat (and in the United States from 1867, Harper's Bazaar).*


This Lady's Monthly Museum, volume 3, includes editions from July, August, September, October, November and December 1799. The preface to the volume addresses its female readership:

'We should be highly ungrateful to the amiable sex by which our monthly labours have been so cordially received, and so liberally remunerated, did we dismiss our third volume without publicly expressing our thanks for the past, and our resolutions to make exertions that may merit its future favours.

It is with infinite satisfaction we find, that the delicacy of sentiment, and chastity of selection, which we have sedulously adhered to in the conduct of our work, have rendered it, in numerous instances, a welcome visitor at the most respectable seminaries of female education. We have been favoured by many governesses of ladies' boarding schools with most flattering testimonies of approbation, and assurances of support, on the condition (which we hope never to infringe) of persevering in the plan that we have hitherto pursued.

By the liberality of our correspondents we are enabled to present a more copious assemblage of original articles than will be met with in any work of the kind extant -
The talk of selection, however, is a painful one; and the unsuccessful candidates for insertion may be assured, that it gives us as much uneasiness to reject, as it can them to be rejected; but we owe too much respect to our fair patronesses, to admit into this Museum what could neither improve nor amuse them.

In our embellishments we have been happy enough to give general satisfaction: the plates of fashions are just representations, and accurately coloured; and there will be occasionally relieved by portraits of eminent ladies, accompanied by memoirs, whenever such can be procured as we can rely upon being correct and authentic'.

*source: History of Publishing, Britannica