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The Lady's Magazine, or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement, 1770-1837


Visitors Since 3 July 2000

Last Update 21 April 04

The 1790 Volume, January to July Issues
Court and fashion desciptions, 1 illustration

The 1790 Volume, August to December Issues
"Christmas Day" article, 1 illustration

The 1791 Volume Court and fashion descriptions

The 1792 Volume Princess Sophia portrait

The 1793 Volume Court descriptions and Princess Augusta portrait

The 1794 Volume Court descriptions

The 1795 Volume Court and fashion descriptions plus "The Libertine Reclaimed: A Tale" with illustration

The 1796 Volume Court and fashion descriptions, 1 illustration

The 1797 Volume Court and fashion descriptions, 1 illustration

The 1798 Volume Court and fashion descriptions, 1 plate plus "Wax Bosoms"

The 1799 Volume, January to Octobler Issues Court and fashion descriptions, 1 illustration

The 1799 Volume, November to December Issues Plus Supplement Issue Vauxhall Gardens plate

Journal now begins printing color fashion plates

The 1800 Volume, January to July Issues Fashion and court descriptions, 1 illustration

The 1800 Volume, August and September Issues 1 color plate with text

The 1800 Volume, October Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1800 Volume, November and December Issues 1 color plate with text

The 1801 Volume, January and February Issues Court and fashion descriptions, 1 plate

The 1801 Volume, March to May Issues fashion descriptions

The 1801 Volume, June Issue Court and fashion descriptions, 1 color plate

The 1801 Volume, July Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1801 Volume, August and September Issues 1 color plate, text

The 1801 Volume, October Issue 1 plate, text

The 1801 Volume, November and December Issues 1 color plate, text

The 1802 Volume, January Issue fashion text

The 1802 Volume, February Issue fashion text

The 1802 Volume, March and April Issues 1 plate

The 1802 Volume, May to August Issues text

The 1802 Volume, September to December Issues 2 color plates, fashion description

The 1805 Volume, January and February Issues Court and fashion description, 1 color plate

The 1805 Volume, March Issue 1 plate

The 1805 Volume, April Issue 1 plate

The 1805 Volume, May Issue 1 plate, text

The 1805 Volume, June Issue 1 plate, text

The 1805 Volume, July and August Issues 1 plate, text

The 1805 Volume, September and October Issues 1 color plate, text

The 1805 Volume, November and December Issues 1 plate, text

The 1809 Volume, January Issue 1 illustration

The 1809 Volume, February to June Issues 1 color plate

The 1809 Volume, July to October Issues 1 illustration

The 1809 Volume, November Issue 1 color plate

The 1809 Volume, December Issue 1 illustration

The 1810 Volume, January Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1810 Volume, February Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1810 Volume, March Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1810 Volume, April Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1810 Volume, May Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1810 Volume, June Issue 1 color plate, text, cast of "Oh! This Love!" comic opera

The 1810 Volume, July Issue 1 color plate, "On Avarice"

The 1810 Volume, August and September Issues 1 color plate, "Modern Seduction"

The 1810 Volume, October Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1810 Volume, November Issue 1 color plate, Princess Amelia's funeral

The 1810 Volume, December Issue 1 color plate, text

The 1812 Volume 1 color plate, fashion descriptions

The 1813 Volume 1 illustration, fashion descriptions

The 1814 Volume fashion descriptions

The 1815 Volume fashion description and poem "A Pair of Plagues"

The 1823 Volume 4 color plates, no text

The 1824 Volume 2 color plates, no text

The 1825 Volume 1 color plate with commentary


Key Sources on The Lady's Magazine

Bennett, Shelley M. "Changing Images of Women in Late-Eighteenth-Century England: The "Lady's Magazine," 1770-1810." Arts Magazine 55.9 (May 1981): 138-141. [has ten small black and white photographs of plates]

Copeland, Edward. Women Writing About Money: Women's Fiction in England, 1790- 1820. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism. Eds. Marilyn Butler and James Chandler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. [includes black and white versions of various plates]

Laudermilk, Sharon, and Teresa L. Hamlin. The Regency Companion. New York: Garland, 1989.

Laver, James. The Concise History of Costume and Fashion. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1978.


About The Lady's Magazine . . .

"Curiously enough the first true fashion plates were not French but English. The Lady's Magazine was publishing them from 1770 onwards. And suddenly similar plates were being published all over Europe" (Laver 146-7)

The Lady's Magazine "was the first of the true fashion-plate magazines that was issued regularly. The plates were not decorated with color until 1790. Before 1790, dressmakers would color the plates themselves to enhance the dress designs and entice their lady customers to order garments" (Laudermilk and Hamlin 33).

The Lady's Magazine was published in London, monthly, printed for Robinson and Roberts, starting in August of 1770. In 1820, they began a new series, starting again with volume 1 for that year. The University of California system has some copies of this journal in their various special collections (UCLA has some 1802 copies, while UCR has 1775, 1778, 1784, 1789, and 1792-4 copies. UCSB has the mother lode, however, the complete set from 1773 to 1818; some of their copies, they state are "very worn."

"The Lady's Magazine with its emphasis on the doings of the haut ton marked "fashion" as a structure around which middling rank women could mount their conversation about consumption. The Lady's Magazine tapped a grass-roots response to the subject, too, since it drew on its eager reader for the contributions that filled its pages. The magazine offered women the opportunity to speak to other women, to argue with one antoher, and often to provide one another with specialized information otherwise hard to come by. The Lady's, together with other women's magazines at the end of the century, nurtured a culture for women centered on material culture" (Copeland 3).

"The genteel reader might take home La Belle Assemblee; the tradesman's daughter might be more likely to choose the Lady's Magazine, but again, both magazines could appeal, like the novels, across the entire span of the middling ranks" (Copeland 6).

"It is no exaggeration to claim that the Lady's Magazine, in its first fify years, from 1770 to 1820, defined public issues for women. Through its subsequent yearly appearance gathered in bound volumes, it not only had an indefinite shelf-life, but it became a magazine of reference. [Here Copeland refers us to other sources to support this statement]" (Copeland 119).


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