Rachael Alexander is an early-career researcher, based at the University of Strathclyde, UK, where she teaches English literature. Her research focuses on American, Canadian and British magazines published throughout the twentieth century, considering them as collaborative texts, cultural artefacts and commercial products.

Alexander’s thorough and detailed book is a welcome addition to North American periodical and print culture studies, offering a comparative reading of the Ladies’ Home Journal and the Canadian Home Journal through their divergent histories of production and consumption through the 1920s. Alexander shows that a “woman’s” magazine is far from the homogenous item that term implies and that closer study affords a more nuanced reading of the collaborative networks and cultural impulses behind the mass market magazine. Alexander’s work is a model of interdisciplinarity, successfully employing literary, consumer, popular, print, feminist and North American studies to re-read the significance and creative contexts of these popular magazines. — Sue Currell, Reader in American Literature, School of English, University of Sussex, UK

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Two Home Journals: A Comparative Approach; 2. The Art of Femininity: Aspiration and Self-Improvement; 3. The Home and Domesticity: Readers, Consumers, Citizens; 4. Fashionable, Beautiful, Moral: Idealised Images of Femininity; Appendix: Content Analysis of Advertising from the Ladies’ Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal; Notes; References; Index.

Rachael Alexander is an early-career researcher, based at the University of Strathclyde, UK, where she teaches English literature. Her research focuses on American, Canadian and British magazines published throughout the twentieth century, considering them as collaborative texts, cultural artefacts and commercial products.

Alexander’s thorough and detailed book is a welcome addition to North American periodical and print culture studies, offering a comparative reading of the Ladies’ Home Journal and the Canadian Home Journal through their divergent histories of production and consumption through the 1920s. Alexander shows that a “woman’s” magazine is far from the homogenous item that term implies and that closer study affords a more nuanced reading of the collaborative networks and cultural impulses behind the mass market magazine. Alexander’s work is a model of interdisciplinarity, successfully employing literary, consumer, popular, print, feminist and North American studies to re-read the significance and creative contexts of these popular magazines. — Sue Currell, Reader in American Literature, School of English, University of Sussex, UK

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Two Home Journals: A Comparative Approach; 2. The Art of Femininity: Aspiration and Self-Improvement; 3. The Home and Domesticity: Readers, Consumers, Citizens; 4. Fashionable, Beautiful, Moral: Idealised Images of Femininity; Appendix: Content Analysis of Advertising from the Ladies’ Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal; Notes; References; Index.

Rachael Alexander is an early-career researcher, based at the University of Strathclyde, UK, where she teaches English literature. Her research focuses on American, Canadian and British magazines published throughout the twentieth century, considering them as collaborative texts, cultural artefacts and commercial products.

Alexander’s thorough and detailed book is a welcome addition to North American periodical and print culture studies, offering a comparative reading of the Ladies’ Home Journal and the Canadian Home Journal through their divergent histories of production and consumption through the 1920s. Alexander shows that a “woman’s” magazine is far from the homogenous item that term implies and that closer study affords a more nuanced reading of the collaborative networks and cultural impulses behind the mass market magazine. Alexander’s work is a model of interdisciplinarity, successfully employing literary, consumer, popular, print, feminist and North American studies to re-read the significance and creative contexts of these popular magazines. — Sue Currell, Reader in American Literature, School of English, University of Sussex, UK

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Two Home Journals: A Comparative Approach; 2. The Art of Femininity: Aspiration and Self-Improvement; 3. The Home and Domesticity: Readers, Consumers, Citizens; 4. Fashionable, Beautiful, Moral: Idealised Images of Femininity; Appendix: Content Analysis of Advertising from the Ladies’ Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal; Notes; References; Index.