Arthur's Lady's Home Magazine

Not to be confused with Arthur's Magazine.

Arthur's Home Magazine, 1867

Arthur's Home Magazine (1852 – c. 1898) or Ladies' Home Magazine was an American periodical published in Philadelphia by Timothy Shay Arthur. Editors Arthur and Virginia Frances Townsend selected writing and illustrations intended to appeal to female readers. Among the contributors were Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Rosella Rice, and Kate Sutherland.[1]

In its early years, the monthly contained a selection of articles originally published in Arthur's weekly Home Gazette.[2][3] Its non-fiction stories contained occasional factual inaccuracies for the sake of a good read.[4] A contemporary review judged it "gotten up in good taste and well; and is in nothing overdone. Even its fashion plates are not quite such extravagant caricatures of rag-baby work as are usually met with in some of the more fancy magazines."[5] Readers included patrons of the Mercantile Library Association of San Francisco.[6]

Author Rosella Rice, best known for her writings about Johnny Appleseed, contributed countless stories, humorous essays, tutorials, and poems to the magazine. Writing from the perspective of various comedic characters, she adopted pseudonyms including Pipsissiway Potts (responsible homemaker),[7] Aunt Chatty Brooks (eccentric hotelier),[8][9][10][11] and Mrs. Sam Starkey (elderly busybody).[12] The characters, likely created for Arthur's, "inhabited her magazine's stories, and became 'real' to hundreds of readers".[13]

  1. ^ Alice Fahs (1999). "The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900". Journal of American History. 85.
  2. ^ Bertha Monica Stearns (1945). "Philadelphia Magazines for Ladies: 1830-1860". Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 69.
  3. ^ "About Arthur's home gazette. (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1850-1855". US Newspaper Directory. Washington DC: Library of Congress. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  4. ^ Dorothy Bundy Turner Potter (2010), Food for Apollo: cultivated music in antebellum Philadelphia, Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, OL 24902445M
  5. ^ Wisconsin Farmer and North-Western Cultivator. 1857. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. ^ "Annual report of the president of the Mercantitle Library Association of San Francisco". 1855. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ^ Arthur's Illustrated Home Magazine. T.S. Arthur & Sons. 1875.
  8. ^ Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John (1901). Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography. D. Appleton. p. 290.
  9. ^ Barile, Mary Collins (2013-05-28). Hooked Rugs of the Midwest: A Handcrafted History. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61423-948-2.
  10. ^ App. II, 1925? (1 .) ; III, 1928 (9 p.) ; [IV] 1931 (7 p.) : V, 1934 (9 p.). W. Abbatt. 1924.
  11. ^ The Colloquial Who's who: An Attempt to Identify the Many Authors, Writers and Contributors who Have Used Pen-names, Initials, Etc. (1600-1924), Also a List of Sobriquets, Nicknames, Epigrams, Oddities, War Phrases, Etc. W. Abbatt. 1924.
  12. ^ "Rosella Rice - more information". 2016-03-22. Archived from the original on 22 March 2016. Retrieved 2022-06-26.
  13. ^ cavin, lee. "Conversation: Perrysville's Rosella Rice: A liberated woman before women's lib". Ashland Times-Gazette. Retrieved 2022-06-27.