Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939

Abstract

Provides new perspectives on women’s print media in interwar Britain This collection of new essays recovers and explores a neglected archive of women’s print media and dispels the myth of the interwar decades as a retreat to ‘home and duty’ for women. The volume demonstrates that women produced magazines and periodicals ranging in forms and appeal from highbrow to popular, private circulation to mass-market, and radical to reactionary. It shows that the 1920s and 1930s gave rise to a plurality of new challenges and opportunities for women as consumers, workers and citizens, as well as wives and mothers. Featuring interdisciplinary research by recognised specialists in the fields of literary and periodical studies as well as women’s and cultural history, this volume recovers overlooked or marginalised media and archival sources, as well as reassessing well-known commercial titles. Designed as a ‘go-to’ resource both for readers new to the field and for specialists seeking the latest developments in this area of research, it opens up new directions and methodologies for modern periodical studies and cultural history. Organised by sections devoted to the arts, modern style, domestic and service magazines, and feminist and organizationally-based media, this volume foregrounds connections between different genres of women’s periodical publishing and makes a major contribution to revisionist scholarship on the interwar period. The detailed appendix provides a valuable resource to facilitate new research on interwar women's magazines. Key Features Presents new essays on women’s print media in interwar Britain, revealing the diversity of genres addressed to women readers, from domestic magazines, pulps and women’s pages to highbrow reviews and feminist periodicals Features innovative, interdisciplinary research by recognized specialists in the fields of literary and periodical studies, and women’s and cultural history Contributes to the recent expansion of scholarship on the interwar period by recovering overlooked or marginalized media and archival sources, as well as reassessing well-known commercial titles Designed as a ‘go to’ resource both for readers new to the field and for specialists seeking the latest developments in this area of research—opening up new directions and methodologies for modern periodicals studies and cultural history