Taking Liberties: Early American Women's Magazines and Their Readers

Unlike its British forebears, the early American magazine, or "periodical miscellany," functioned in culture as a forum driven by manifold contributions and perpetuated by reader response. Arising in colonial Philadelphia, America's more "democratic" magazine sustained a range of conflicting ideas, norms, and beliefs--indeed, it promoted their very exchange.

It invited and embraced competing voices, particularly during the first 75 years of the Republic. In this first-ever account of the early American magazine as a distinct form, Amy Beth Aronson reveals how it positioned women's words in a uniquely productive way, offering a kind of community of women readers who, together, wrote and revised magazine content and collectively negotiated and authorized new language for a new public's use.