Ladies' Home Journal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ladies' Home Journal

March 2009 cover of Ladies' Home Journal
Editor-in-chief Sally Lee
Categories Women's interest, lifestyle
Frequency 11 issues/year
Publisher Meredith Corporation
Total circulation
(2011)		 3,267,239[1]
First issue 1883
Country USA
Language English
Website www.lhj.com
ISSN 0023-7124

Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine published by the Meredith Corporation . It first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States. It was the first American magazine to reach 1 million subscribers in 1907.[citation needed]

Ladies' Home Journal is one of the Seven Sisters, a group of women's service magazines.

History

The Ladies' Home Journal arose from a popular single-page supplement in the American magazine Tribune and Farmer titled Women at Home. Women at Home was written by Louisa Knapp Curtis, wife of the magazine's publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis.[2] After a year it became an independent publication with Knapp as editor for the first six years. Its original name was The Ladies Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper, but she dropped the last three words in 1886. It rapidly became the leading American magazine of its type, reaching a circulation of more than one million copies in ten years.[2] Edward W. Bok took over the editorship in late 1889 until 1919. Among features he introduced was the popular Ruth Ashmore advice column written by Isabel Mallon.[3] At the turn of the 20th century, the magazine published the work of muckrakers and social reformers such as Jane Addams. In 1901 it published two articles highlighting the early architectural designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.[4]

During World War II, it was a particularly favored venue of the government for messages intended for housewives.[5]

The Journal, along with its major rivals, Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Redbook and Woman's Day were long known as the "seven sisters".[6] For decades, the Journal had the greatest circulation of this group, but it fell behind McCall's in 1961.[7] In 1968, its circulation was 6.8 million compared to McCall's 8.5 million. That year, Curtis Publishing sold the Ladies' Home Journal, along with the magazine The American Home, to Downe Communications for $5.4 million in stock.[8][9] Between 1969 and 1974 Downe was acquired by Charter Company,[10] which sold the magazine to Family Media Inc., publishers of Health, in 1982 when the company decided to divest its publishing interests. In 1986, the Meredith Corporation acquired the magazine from Family Media for $96 million.[11][12] By 1998, the Journal's circulation had dropped to 4.5 million.[13]

The Ladies' Home Journal's low subscription rates, inclusion of advertising to off-set costs, and reliance on popular content contributed to the publication's success. This operating structure was adopted by men's magazines like McClure's and Munsey's roughly a decade after it had become the standard practice of American women's magazines. Scholars argue that women's magazines, like the Ladies' Home journal, pioneered these strategies "magazine revolution".[14]

The magazine debuted an extensive visual and editorial redesign in its March 2012 issue. Photographer Brigitte Lacombe was hired to shoot cover photos, with Kate Winslet appearing on the first revamped issue. The Journal announced that portions of its editorial content would be crowdsourced from readers, who would be fairly compensated for their work.[15] The arrangement was one of the first of its kind among major consumer magazines.[16]

Features

Knapp continued as editor until she was succeeded by Edward William Bok in 1889. However, she remained involved with the magazine's management, and she also wrote a column for each issue. In 1892, it became the first magazine to refuse patent medicine advertisements.[17] In 1896, Bok became Louisa Knapp's son-in-law when he married her daughter, Mary Louise Curtis.

The most famous cooking teacher of her time, Sarah Tyson Rorer served as LHJ first food editor from 1897 to 1911,[18] when she moved to Good Housekeeping.

In 1936, Mary Cookman, wife of New York Post editor Joseph Cookman began working at the Ladies' Home Journal. She was named Executive Editor and remained with LHJ until 1963.[19] She was known throughout most of her career as Mary Bass.

In 1946, LHJ adopted the slogan, "Never underestimate the power of a woman", which it continues to use today.[20]

The magazine's trademark feature is Can This Marriage Be Saved?, a popular column in which each person of a couple in a troubled marriage explains their view of the problem, a marriage counselor explains the solutions offered in counseling, and the outcome is published; it was written for 30 years starting in 1953 by Dorothy D. MacKaye under the name of Dorothy Cameron Disney.[21] MacKaye co-founded this column with Paul Popenoe, a founding practitioner of marriage counseling in the U.S. The two co-authored a book of the same name in 1960. Both the book and the column drew their material from the extensive case files of the American Institute of Family Relations in Los Angeles, California.[22]

Folded copy of The Ladies Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper (March 1886), founded and edited by Louisa Knapp Curtis

The illustrations of William Ladd Taylor were featured between 1895 and 1926; the magazine also sold reproductions of his works in oil and water-color.[23]

Editors

  • Louisa Knapp Curtis (1889-1889)
  • Edward William Bok (1890-1919)
  • H. O. Davis (1919-1920)
  • Barton W. Currie (1920-1928)
  • Loring A. Schuler (1928-1935)
  • Bruce Gould and Beatrice Gould (1935-1962)
  • Curtiss Anderson (1962-1964)
  • Davis Thomas (1964-1965)
  • John Mack Carter (1965-1973)
  • Lenore Hershey (1973-1981)
  • Myrna Blyth (1981-2002)
  • Diane Salvatore (2002-2008)
  • Sally Lee (2008-present)

Writers

Current staff

  • Sally Lee, Editor-in-Chief
  • Kate Lawler, Executive Editor
  • Jeffrey Saks, Creative Director
  • Margot Gilman, Deputy Editor
  • Julie Bain, Health Director
  • Erica Metzger, Beauty Director
  • Lorraine Glennon, Senior Editor
  • Louise Sloan, Senior Editor
  • Sue Owen Erneta, Fashion Editor
  • Tara Bench, Food and Entertaining Editor
  • Beth Roehrig, Home Editor
  • Catherine LeFebvre, Senior Online Editor

Cover gallery

  • George Gibbs for the July, 1902

  • March 1905

  • 1906 Ladies' Home Journal cover

  • March 1922 issue illustrated by N. C. Wyeth

References

  1. ↑ "eCirc for Consumer Magazines". Audit Bureau of Circulations. June 30, 2011. Retrieved December 1, 2011. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Curtis Publishing Company (Saturday Evening Post & Ladies Home Journal)
  3. ↑ (28 December 1898). "Ruth Ashmore" Dead: A Well-Known Writer Succumbs to Pneumonia, Following Grip, The New York Times
  4. ↑ "A Home in a Prairie Town" (February 1901) and "A Small Home with 'Lots of Room in It'" (July 1901).
  5. ↑ Emily Yellin, Our Mothers' War, p 23 ISBN 0-7432-4514-8
  6. ↑ Carmody, D. Identity Crisis for 'Seven Sisters'. New York Times. August 6, 1990.
  7. ↑ Anonymous. Revolt at Curtis. Time magazine.Friday, Oct. 16, 1964.
  8. ↑ Bedingfield, R. E. Curtis Publishing Sells 2 Magazines; Downe Paying $5.4-Million in Stock, The New York Times, August 15, 1968, Business and Finance section, p. 54.
  9. ↑ Anonymous. Too Few Believers. Time. Friday, Aug. 23, 1968
  10. ↑ Anonymous. Magna charter'. Time, Monday, Jun. 16, 1980. .
  11. ↑ History of Meredith Corporation
  12. ↑ Anonymous. Meredith Won't Tinker with Added Magazines. The New York Times, November 25, 1985, Late City Final Edition, Section D, Page 2, Column 5.
  13. ↑ Kuczynski, A. Some Consumer Magazines Are Getting Real. New York Times. November 9, 1998.
  14. ↑ Waller-Zuckerman, Mary Ellen. ""Old Homes, in a City of Perpetual Change": Women's Magazines, 1890-1916." The Business History Review 63, no. 4 (Winter, 1989): pp. 715-756.
  15. ↑
  16. ↑
  17. ↑ 30. Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine and Other Evils. Bok, Edward William. 1921. The Americanization of Edward Bok
  18. ↑ Anonymous. 2008. 125 Years of Ladies' Home Journal: Food, Ladies Home Journal, 125(8).
  19. ↑ NY Times Obituary September 8, 1991
  20. ↑ Anonymous. 2008. A look back in covers. Ladies Home Journal, 125(1).
  21. ↑ Weber, Bruce (1992-09-08). "Dorothy D. MacKaye Dies at 88; Ladies' Home Journal Columnist". New York Times 
  22. ↑ Popenoe, Paul; Disney, Dorothy Cameron (1960). Can This Marriage Be Saved? (First ed.). New York: The Macmillan Company. Library of Congress number: 60-8124. 
  23. ↑ Chapman, III, John. "Biography". "William Ladd Taylor; American Illustrator. Retrieved 16 April 2010. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ladies' Home Journal.
Curtis Publishing Company
Magazines (years published by Curtis)
Comic books (Novelty Press)
Key Figures
Curtis-Martin Newspapers, Inc.
Newspapers
Key figures
Curtis Circulation Company
.
Legacy
People
Magazines
Television series
Websites
CBS affiliates
Fox affiliates
MyNetworkTV affiliates
Other affiliates
Defunct
50 largest magazines in the United States
As of June 2013
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.