Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s-2000s: The Postwar and Contemporary Period

Description

Foregrounds the diversity of periodicals, fiction and other printed matter targeted at women in the postwar period Foregrounds the diversity and the significance of print cultures for women in the postwar period across periodicals, fiction and other printed matter Examines changes and continuities as women's magazines have moved into digital formats Highlights the important cultural and political contexts of women's periodicals including the Women's Liberation Movement and Socialism Explores the significance of women as publishers, printers and editors Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s-2000s draws attention to the wide range of postwar print cultures for women. The collection spans domestic, cultural and feminist magazines and extends to ephemera, novels and other printed matter as well as digital magazine formats. The range of essays indicates both the history of publishing for women and the diversity of readers and audiences over the mid-late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century in Britain. The collection reflects in detail the important ways in magazines and printed matter contributed to, challenged, or informed British women's culture. A range of approaches, including interview, textual analysis and industry commentary are employed in order to demonstrate the variety of ways in which the impact of postwar print media may be understood. List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s–2010s Part I: Publishing Industries and Practices 1. Culture Versus Commerce: The Publishing of Feminist Books Since the 1940s 2. Spare Rib and the Print Culture of Women’s Liberation 3. The Impact of the Women-Only Publishing Phenomenon on Early Second-Wave Feminism, Literature and Culture 4. Producing a Lesbian Magazine at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century 5. ‘Hey, here’s the new way’: Young Women’s Magazines in Times of the Web 3.0 Part II: Interacting with Readers 6. ‘There is a War on. Does She Know?’: Transatlantic Female Stardom and Women’s Wartime Labour in British Film Fan Magazines 7. ‘The Most Helpful Friends in the World’: Letters Pages, Expertise and Emotion in British Women’s Magazines, c. 1960–80 8. ‘Everything a Girl Could Ask For’? Fashioning Feminism in Just Seventeen Part III: Tastemaking: Arts and Culture 9. ‘When is a writer not a writer? When he’s a man’: Women’s Literary Award Culture in Britain 1940–2019 10. Arena Three Magazine and the Construction of the Middlebrow Lesbian Reader 11. Always in with the In-Crowd: Vogue and the Cultural Politics of Gender, Race, Class and Taste 12. ‘Leaps and Bounds’: Feminist Interventions in Scottish Literary Magazine Culture 13. Promoting Involvement in Performance: Performing Arts Journals and Women Writers, 1945–69 Part IV: Feminisms and Activisms 14. ‘It’s Capitalism, not me sweetheart’: Women’s Activist Magazines on the Left 15. Women’s Voice , the Rise and Fall of a Socialist-Feminist Newspaper in Britain 1972–82 16. Spare Rib, Ms. and Reproductive Rights: A Comparative Analysis of Approaches 17. Digital Feminist Cultures 18. ‘Alive, practical and different’: Harpies & Quines and Scottish Feminist Print in the 1990s Part V: Negotiating Femininities 19. ‘Doing Food’ in Vogue 20. Frank – Frocks, Politics, Lipstick, Handbags, Human Rights, Babies, Gardening, Stilettos and Fridge Magnets 21. Writing about Mothering and Childcare in the British Women’s Liberation Movement, 1970–85 22. Beyond Utility: Pushing the Frontiers in Women’s Monthlies: Modern Woman 1943–51 Appendix Notes on Contributors Index