The Ladies' Magazine was an early magazine for women published in Boston, Massachusetts. Also known as Ladies Magazine and Literary Gazette and , later as American Ladies Magazine, it was designed to be American, and named to separate itself from the Lady's Magazine of London. The magazine was founded by Reverend John Lauris Blake, Episcopal minister and headmaster of the Cornhill School for Young Ladies, who desired to set a model for American womanhood.[1]
It is thought to have been the first magazine to be edited by a woman; from 1827 until 1836, its editor was Sarah Josepha Hale.[2] As editor, Hale hoped she could aid in the education of women, as she wrote, "not that they may usurp the situation, or encroach on the prerogatives of man; but that each individual may lend her aid to the intellectual and moral character of those within her sphere".[3]
In 1837 it merged with the Lady's Book and Magazine published in Philadelphia by Louis Antoine Godey and better known by its later name, Godey's Lady's Book. Hale moved from Boston to Philadelphia to edit the new, combined magazine.[4]