Godey’s Lady’s Book

Essay

Engraving of Godey's Lady's Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale.
Sarah Josepha Hale was longtime editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. (Library Company of Philadelphia)

The first successful women’s magazine and most widely circulated magazine in the antebellum United States, Godey’s Lady’s Book offered fashion illustrations and advice, literary pieces, and articles on current events and popular culture. Founded in Philadelphia in 1830 by Louis Antoine Godey (1804-1878) and edited for four decades by Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879), the magazine provided a platform for women’s interests and fostered traditions with a lasting impact on American culture.

Originally from New Hampshire, Hale came to Philadelphia in 1841 after gaining recognition in Boston, where she published a successful novel,  Northwood: A Tale of New England; edited the first women’s magazine, Ladies’ Magazine, beginning in 1828; and worked to foster historical consciousness, as in the erection of the Bunker Hill Monument.  A widow with five children, while in Boston she also published poetry and, most famously, the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

In 1837 Hale merged her magazine with Godey’s and became editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. By that time, Hale had gained a reputation for high editorial standards and for soliciting original work, often from women writers.  She also had established her philosophy of “Woman’s Influence” that argued for women assuming moral authority over husband and children by practicing domesticity and piety at home. She brought these practices and beliefs with her to Godey’s, where she oversaw tremendous expansion. When she assumed the editorship, Godey’s had approximately 10,000 subscribers, and by the 1860s it had over 150,000, despite its high cost of three dollars annually. Its role as the most popular magazine of its day provided Hale a platform through which to influence the nation’s tastes and the position of women. She included a section on women in the workforce, argued for women’s education, and published a number of special issues comprising only women’s writings.  Because they sought a national readership, neither Hale nor Godey allowed the publication to become embroiled directly in political matters, refusing even to mention, much less take a position on, sectionalism and the Civil War.  This decision cost them subscribers who had to turn elsewhere for news on the war.

A print featured in Godey's Lady's Book featuring the latest fashions of the era.
Among Godey’s Lady’s Book’s popular features were tinted images showing the latest fashions of the nineteenth century. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

The most popular features of the magazine included hand-tinted fashion plates in each issue, patterns for women to use in making garments at home, sheet music for piano, and short stories by authors like Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), and Washington Irving (1783-1859), among others.  It also included news and features.

Godey’s Lady’s Book had a large impact on United States culture. Under Hale’s leadership the magazine hired Lydia H. Sigourney (1791-1865) to report on events in London.  Through her reports the magazine inaugurated such traditions as white wedding dresses and decorated evergreen trees at Christmas. Perhaps the most famous tradition to come out of Godey’s pages was Thanksgiving, a holiday which Hale persistently and successfully lobbied for and promoted by sharing recipes and features in Godey’s pages.

Godey sold the publication to John Hill Seyes Haulenbeek (?-1898) in 1877, and it lasted until Haulenbeek’s death in 1898.  Godey’s Lady’s Book made a lasting literary and social contribution in the U.S., offering women a venue to share their creativity and discuss issues that mattered to them.  It shaped American culture in ways still evident in the twenty-first century–from Thanksgiving dinners to evergreen Christmas trees to modern fashion magazines.

Beverly C. Tomek is the author of Pennsylvania Hall: A ‘Legal Lynching’ in the Shadow of the Liberty Bell (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Colonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania (NYU Press, 2011). She earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Houston and teaches at the University of Houston-Victoria. (Author information current at time of publication.)

Copyright 2015, Rutgers University

Gallery

Godey's Paris Fashions Americanized

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Along with short stories written by some of the greatest U.S. authors of the nineteenth century, the magazine discussed topics pertaining women. With depictions such as this one showing fashions from across the world, Godey’s Lady’s Book became one of the country’s first fashion magazines.

Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Library Company of Philadelphia

L.H. Sigourney was a nineteenth-century U.S. poet who was published in several issues of Godey’s Lady’s Book. She at first published her works anonymously, but by the 1830s began selling her writing under her name. Her works revolved around pious and morbid themes.

Sarah Josepha Hale

Library Company of Philadelphia

Sarah Josepha Hale was the editor for Godey’s Lady’s Book for four decades. During that time she presided over publication of a wide range of topics including short stories, fashion and recipes, and lobbied for the holiday of Thanksgiving. Though she worked for the first magazine in the country dedicated to women's issues, she opposed women’s involvement in politics. Her belief was that if women got involved in such issues they would lose their pristine moral sensibility.

Stephen Girard Engraving in Godey's Lady's Book

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

In this engraving made for Godey’s Lady’s Book, Stephen Girard is shown with an image of the First Bank of the United States below his portrait. Girard was a celebrated banker and philanthropist who put his personal credit on the line to save the United States from financial collapse by buying the First Bank of the United States after its charter expired. Because of his prominence, Girard showed up in various accounts in the magazine.

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Related Reading

Blum, Stella. Fashions and Costumes from Godey’s Lady’s Book. Mineoloa, New York: Dover Publications, 1985.

Endres, Kathleen L. Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines. New York: Greenwood Publishing, 1995.

Marling, Karal Ann. Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000.

McCall, Laura. “’The Reign of Brute Force is Now Over’: A Content Analysis of Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1830-1860.” Journal of the Early Republic 9(2) (1989): 217-36

Mills, Ruth. The Fancy World of Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1840-1859. Ottawa: Canadian Heritage, Parks Canada, 1993.

Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. The Literary History of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company, 1906.

Pattee, Fred Lewis. The First Century of American Literature: 1770-1870. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966.

Okker, Patricia Ann. “Sarah Josepha Hale, Lydia Sigourney, and the Poetic Tradition in Two Nineteenth-Century Women’s Magazines.” American Periodicals 3 (1993): 32-42.

Rose, Anne C. Voices of the Marketplace: American Thought and Culture, 1830-1860. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

Tonkovich, Nicole. Domesticity with a Difference: The Nonfiction of Catharine Beecher, Sarah J. Hale, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1997.

Zophy, Angela Howard, “A True Woman’s Duty `To Do Good’: Sarah Josepha Hale and Benevolence in Antebellum America,” in Randall M. Miller and John R. McGivigan, eds., The Moment of Decision: Biographical Essays on American Character and Regional Identity. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.

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