Taking Liberties: Early American Women's Magazines and Their Readers

(Hardback)

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Offers the first-ever analysis of the American women's magazine as a distinct form, as well as a presentation of the construction of the popular woman reader. Unlike its British forebears, the early American magazine, or "periodical miscellany," functioned in culture as a forum driven by manifold contributions and perpetuated by reader response. Arising in colonial Philadelphia, America's more "democratic" magazine sustained a range of conflicting ideas, norms, and beliefs--indeed, it promoted their very exchange. It invited and embraced competing voices, particularly during the first 75 years of the Republic. In this first-ever account of the early American magazine as a distinct form, Amy Beth Aronson reveals how such participatory dynamics and public visibility offered special advantages to women, especially to those with sufficient education, access, and financial means, for whom "ladies magazines" offered unusual opportunities for self-expression, collective discussion, and cultural response. Moreover, the genre opened and sutained dialogue among contributors, whose competing voices played off each other, provoking rebuttal and revision by subsequent contributors and noncontributing readers. This free play of discourse positioned women's words in a uniquely productive way, offering a kind of community of women readers who, together, wrote and revised magazine content and collectively negotiated and authorized new language for a new public's use.

Reviews

.,."this is a thoughtful book tha provides a good overview of early women's magazines. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers."-Choice
...this is a thoughtful book tha provides a good overview of early women's magazines. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.-Choice
[a] valuable addition to the growing scholarship on women's periodicals and their readers....[T]aking Liberties is a well researched and thoughtfully considered addition to the field. It examines not only women's magazines of the eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries but also their relevance to women's magazines of our own time.-Journalism History
[T]his is an insightful, intelligent, important book. It shows early women's magazine readers as practive agents in creation of meaning, and it illustrates the complexity of a much-maligned magazine form.-American Journalism
"a valuable addition to the growing scholarship on women's periodicals and their readers....Taking Liberties is a well researched and thoughtfully considered addition to the field. It examines not only women's magazines of the eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries but also their relevance to women's magazines of our own time."-Journalism History
"This is an insightful, intelligent, important book. It shows early women's magazine readers as practive agents in creation of meaning, and it illustrates the complexity of a much-maligned magazine form."-American Journalism
..."this is a thoughtful book tha provides a good overview of early women's magazines. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers."-Choice
"[T]his is an insightful, intelligent, important book. It shows early women's magazine readers as practive agents in creation of meaning, and it illustrates the complexity of a much-maligned magazine form."-American Journalism
"[a] valuable addition to the growing scholarship on women's periodicals and their readers....[T]aking Liberties is a well researched and thoughtfully considered addition to the field. It examines not only women's magazines of the eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries but also their relevance to women's magazines of our own time."-Journalism History

Author Bio

Amy Beth Aronson is an independent author. She is the co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinity, The Gendered Society: Readings, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Women and Economics.