Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s-2000s: The Postwar and Contemporary Period

by Laurel Forster (Editor), Joanne Hollows (Editor)

Overview

Foregrounds the diversity of periodicals, fiction and other printed matter targeted at women in the postwar period
Foregrounds the diversity and the significance of print cultures for women in the postwar period across periodicals, fiction and other printed matterExamines changes and continuities as women’s magazines have moved into digital formatsHighlights the important cultural and political contexts of women’s periodicals including the Women’s Liberation Movement and SocialismExplores the significance of women as publishers, printers and editors

Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s-2000s draws attention to the wide range of postwar print cultures for women. The collection spans domestic, cultural and feminist magazines and extends to ephemera, novels and other printed matter as well as digital magazine formats. The range of essays indicates both the history of publishing for women and the diversity of readers and audiences over the mid-late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century in Britain.
The collection reflects in detail the important ways in magazines and printed matter contributed to, challenged, or informed British women’s culture. A range of approaches, including interview, textual analysis and industry commentary are employed in order to demonstrate the variety of ways in which the impact of postwar print media may be understood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399546799
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2025
Series:	The Edinburgh History of Women's Periodical Culture in Britain
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.77(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Laurel Forster is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at University of Portsmouth. Her research interests are in women’s cultural history, women’s magazines and women’s modernist writing. She is author of Magazine Movements: Women’s Culture, Feminisms and Media Form (Bloomsbury 2015) and numerous other articles on women’s magazines and media cultures. She has co-edited a number of books including: Historicising the Women’s Liberation Movement in the Western World: 1960-1999 (Routledge 2018); British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2010), The Recipe Reader: Narratives, Contexts, Traditions (Ashgate 3003).

Joanne Hollows is a writer and independent researcher who previously had a long career teaching in British universities, most recently as Reader in Media and Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is the author of Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture (Manchester UniversityPress 2000), Domestic Cultures (Open UniversityPress 2008) and Media Studies: a Complete Introduction (John Murray 2016), and co-author of Food and Cultural Studies (Routledge 2004). She has co-edited numerous academic collections including Feminism, Domesticity and Popular Culture (Routledge 2009) and Feminism in Popular Culture (Berg 2006).

Table of Contents

List of IllustrationsContributor biographies Introduction​: Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, the Contemporary Period - Laurel Forster

Section I: Publishing Industries and Practices

1.​ ​Culture Versus Commerce: The Publishing of Feminist Books Since the 1940s - Gail Chester

2. ​Spare Rib​ and the Print Culture of Women’s Liberation: Collaboration, Experimentalism and Feminist Publishing Praxis - Lucy Delap and ​Zoe Strimpel

3. ​The Impact of the Women-Only Publishing Phenomenon on Early Second-Wave. Feminism, Literature and Culture - Catherine Riley

4. Producing a Lesbian Magazine at the turn of the Twenty-first Century - Georgina Turner

5. ‘Hey, here’s the new way’: Young Women’s Magazines in Times of the Web 3.0 - Laura Favaro

Section II: Interacting with Readers

6: ‘There is a War on. Does She Know?’: Transatlantic Female Stardom and Women’s Wartime Labour in British Film Fan Magazines - Lisa Stead

7. ‘The Most Helpful Friends in the World’: Letters Pages, Expertise, and Emotion in British Women’s Magazines, c. 1960–1980 - Tracey Loughran

8. ‘Everything a Girl Could Ask For’? Fashioning Feminism in ​Just Seventeen - Melanie Waters

Section III: Tastemaking: Arts and Culture

9. ‘When is a writer not a writer? When he’s a man’: Women’s Literary Award Culture in Britain 1940–2019 - Stevie Marsden

10. ​Arena Three​ Magazine and the Construction of the Middlebrow Lesbian Reader - Amy Tooth Murphy

11. Always in with In Crowd: ​Vogue​ and the Cultural Politics of Gender, Race, Class and Taste - Estella Tincknell

12. ‘Leaps and Bounds’: Feminist Interventions in Scottish Literary Magazine Culture - Eleanor Bell

13. ​Promoting Involvement in Performance: Performing Arts Journals and Women Writers, 1945–65 - Charlotte Purkis

Section IV: Feminisms and Activisms

14. ‘It’s Capitalism, not me sweetheart’: Women’s Activist Magazines on the Left - Victoria Bazin

15. ​Women’s Voice​, the Rise and Fall of a Socialist-Feminist Newspaper in Britain 1972–82 - Sue Bruley

16. ​Spare Rib,​ ​Ms.​ and Reproductive Rights: a Comparative Analysis of Approaches - Claire Sedgwick

17. Digital Feminist Cultures - Kaitlynn Mendes

18. ‘Alive, practical and different’: Harpies & Quines and Scottish Feminist Print in the 1990s - Rachael Alexander

Section V: Negotiating Femininities

19. ‘Doing Food’ in Vogue - Janet Floyd

20. ​Frank -​ Frocks, Politics, Lipstick, Handbags, Human Rights, Babies, Gardening, Stilettos and Fridge Magnets - Mary Irwin

21. Writing about Mothering and Childcare in the British Women’s Liberation Movement, 1970–1985 - Sarah Crook

22. Beyond Utility: Pushing the Frontiers in Women’s Monthlies: Modern Woman 1943-1951 - Fiona Hackney

AppendixIndex

What People are Saying About This

University of Glasgow Faye Hammill

From wartime labour to Web 3.0, from recipes to reproductive rights: this book reveals the full range of topics covered in women's periodicals. Many areas of feminist print activism come into view for the first time, and the essays demonstrate the crucial role of print culture in the lives of women readers. Invaluable.

Editorial Reviews

From wartime labour to Web 3.0, from recipes to reproductive rights: this book reveals the full range of topics covered in women's periodicals. Many areas of feminist print activism come into view for the first time, and the essays demonstrate the crucial role of print culture in the lives of women readers. Invaluable.

University of Glasgow Faye Hammill