The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, indexed fully here, ran from 1852-1879. In 1852 it was the first inexpensive magazine aimed at an audience of middle-class women (monthly, twopence). The second series increased in price, number of pages, page size and paper quality. What influenced the changes in the EDM New Series is analyzed in Beetham MoHo Ch. 6.

Below is a collected list of similar / relevant publications, including a few (bolded) major timeline items for women’s legal standing in Britain

Also from Beeton as a publishing firm:

1861: The Queen (Beetons sold their interest in 1861) weekly, aimed upmarket from the EDM (White 50 shows how its initial issues situate it as non-progressive)

1864: The Young Englishwoman (1864-1869) weekly, Matilda Myra Browne as editress after Isabella Beeton’s death in February 1865

Background:

18th century women’s magazines were for an aristocratic, not popular audience. They established the form of the women’s magazine however, as being “mixed genres [with] a variety of authorial voices” and refusing “news” content (Beetham MoHo 19). Terms used for these publications were metaphors: magazine, museum, repository: all implying a collection of variety and difference within the publication, not a single authorial voice. (More on this in Beetham MoHO 19-22).

19th Century Miscellany Magazines for Women

1770-1832: The Lady’s Magazine, or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (“a model for early 19c titles” Ledbetter 261)

1806-1832: La Belle Assemblée (Ed. John Bell) “trendsetter for fashion magazines… larger royal 8vo format” Expensive at 3 shillings (Ledbetter 261)

1809-95: The Ladies’ Fashionable Repository

1809-1829: Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashion and Politics (by Rudolph Ackermann, publisher of first annual) Frontispiece in Ledbetter 263)

1824-51: The World of Fashion and Continental Feuilletons

1825-39: The Ladies’ Pocket Magazine

1832-70: Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance (with an emphasis on more literature, cheaper price Ledbetter 264)

1834-70: New Monthly Belle Assemblée (more literature, cheaper price Ledbetter 264) (Female editor 1834-44, Cornwell Baron Wilson, depicted rudely by Henry Fothergill Chorley in Ledbetter 264)

1834-94: The Ladies’ Gazette of Fashion

1836-1860: Blackwood’s Lady’s Magazine and Gazette of the Fashionable World

1846-1900: Le Follet: le Journal du Grand Monde, Fashion and Polite Literature

1851: Census reveals a surplus of British women, debate over how to employ them becomes “The Woman Question”

1852-79: The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, see above

1853: Advertisement Duty abolished

1855: Newspaper Stamp Duty abolished

1856: Cheltenham Ladies College opens

1857: The Englishwoman’s Review (1857-1859) “improving and protofeminist” (Beetham MoHO 70, Ch 12)

1857: Matrimonial Causes Act, legalizing divorce

1858: The English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864)
Impeccably presented here as a digitized, annotated edition at the Nineteenth Century Serials Edition project
Edited by Bessie Rayner Parkes and Matilda Mary Hayes “the first British periodical devoted to feminist issues” Ledbetter 269. In 1864 this becomes the Alexandra Magazine & Woman’s Social and Industrial Advocate, then in 1866 under Jessie Boucherett the Englishwoman’s Review of Social and Industrial Questions. (Ledbetter 269 and Pauline Nestor) “improving and protofeminist” (Beetham MoHO 70)

1858: The Ladies’ Treasury: An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Literary Education, Fine Art, Domestic Economy, Needlework and Fashion (1858-1895, major EDM competitor) ninepence, supplement The Treasury of Literature (Beetham MoHO 70, references Cross 191, White 47) White 47 describes LT as “a bland collection” of predictable and safe content “to provide innocent and amusing occupations to fill the interminable leisure hours of young Victorian women.”

1859: The Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women founded

1859: Emily Faithfull establishes the all-woman Victorian Press in August 1859, publishing the English Woman’s Journal

1859: Macmillan’s Magazine – shilling monthly – addressed to “the family” rather than women specifically, though Beetham argues the “dependance on serial fiction assumed the importance of women in that readership” (MoHO 70).

1859: Advice to Young Wives (1859-1860) more similar to EDM

1860: The Cornhill – also shilling monthly – see Macmillan’s

1860: The Lady’s Review – attempts to discuss women’s social position and progress rather than entertain – fails within the year. (White 48)

1861: Paper Duty removed – last of the “Taxes on Knowledge”

1863-1880: Victoria Magazine, published by Emily Faithfull (see 1859) radical but small circulation

1866: Woman’s World (very practical, political, no fashion content), changes title to The Kettledrum: The Woman’s Signal for Action in 1869, closed by the end of 1869. (White 48)

1869: Girton College, Cambridge, opens

1869: The Girl of the Period Miscellany, actively anti-progressive, “light-hearted protest” against progressive social tone (White 50) (Eliza Lynn Linton?)

1872: The Ladies (closes within the year)

1880s feminist periodicals: The Women’s Penny Paper, The Woman’s Herald, the Woman’s Signal

1882: Married Women’s Property Act

1886: Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act

1887-89: Woman’s World (Edited by Oscar Wilde)

1890s: The concept of the “New Woman”

Religious women’s magazines

“mother’s magazines” and “other religious publications aimed at women” very different in project from the EDM (Beetham MoHO 70)

1834-39: The Christian Lady’s Magazine

1844-1845: The Christian Mother’s Magazine

1845-55: The British Mothers’ Magazine

Family (Not Women-specific) Magazines:

See Phegley chapter in 2016 Routledge Handbook

1849-1870: Family Friend (two-penny monthly)

Women’s Newspaper: The Lady’s Newspaper / The Queen

1847-1863: The Lady’s Newspaper (Ed. Charles Dance) (Frontispiece Ledbetter 272, on 273 Ledbetter says “Samuel Beeton purchased the Lady’s Newspaper in 1861 and merged its title with the Queen” and ends it, describing the change in EDM Conversazione 1861 p264 – “After 1866, Edward Cox… developed the newspaper [The Queen] into a stunning fashion publication for upper-class educated women” with large fold-out patterns and features “A volume of the Queen serves up a banquet of material details about upper-class Victorian women’s culture unavailable in any other format” (Ledbetter 274)