Women Editors’ Transnational Networks in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine and Myra’s Journal

Abstract

This chapter considers the transnational collaboration between Samuel Beeton’s Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine and the French magazine Le Moniteur de la mode, run by Beeton’s French counterpart Adolphe Goubaud. Using a range of historical source material, Van Remoortel explores the behind-the-scenes contributions made by women to the success of this venture and to each magazine. In particular, she argues that Louise Goubaud’s contribution to the emergence of the cheap fashion press ‘has been consistently misunderstood’ and that Beeton’s trailblazing status was in fact indebted to her work in a range of ways (47). In democratising women’s access to fashion and design, the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine ‘promoted a new kind of femininity’ (46). Indeed, the pattern postal service made fashion more accessible in literal terms as well, bringing international fashion into the lives of women who were unlikely to find themselves in the boutiques of Paris. Van Remoortel’s essay brings to the fore the significance of transnational exchange, a topic highlighted in a number of other essays in this volume.