Women's Magazines and the Feminine Imagination

The common view of the popular press that catered for women between the two World Wars has been that it was uncomplicated, preoccupied with housewifery. In the first detailed examination of British interwar women s magazines, Fiona Hackney overturns this assumption and presents a new perspective on the lives and experiences of interwar women presented. The author goes deep into the monthly Modern Woman and the weeklies Woman, Home Chat and Woman s Weekly. She explores their content, both textual and importantly visual, reviewing their production and the people who bought and read them. Aided by graphic illustrations and insights gained from women who talk about their memories of magazine reading, she argues that these magazines are hybrid products that facilitated a feminine imagination that opened things up . Also using the metaphor of a window, which could also double as a mirror, this book graphically conveys how magazines offered the expanding female readership a room with a view ."