he Lady's Pictorial was a women's magazine published from 1880 to 1921, when it merged with Eve: The Lady's Pictorial. For most of this period it was a 6d. weekly, and a sister paper to William and Charles Ingram's Illustrated London News, after Alfred Gibbons, who founded and edited the Lady's Pictorial, gained the Ingrams' backing. Gibbons, in an interview published in The Sketch (another pictorial weekly operated by the Illustrated London News Co.) on 30 January 1895, described himself as a City man "with a hobby for illustrated papers, and a great interest in all matters connected with dress"; so "the idea came into my mind that there was room for an illustrated ladies’ paper; for the The Queen, though it published pictures and fashion blocks, did not then attempt to keep up to date in the way of illustration, so I resolved to have a try." The Lady's Pictorial was nicely produced, on good paper, and employed a number of notable illustrators, including some women. In broadly covering all subjects interesting to women, not just fashion, they employed a large number of women contributors who wrote either under their own names or under pseudonyms. In his 1895 interview Gibbons refers to a recent series of articles profiling the leading "Lady Journalists" (reproduced here) and names some of the subeditors responsible for particular sections of the paper; except for himself, he says, and their drama and music critic, "the paper is produced by women for women." The Lady's Pictorial also regularly published short stories and serialized fiction, mostly by women authors, which has yet to be indexed. — Philip Jackson
Lady's Pictorial cover portrait of Queen Victoria, 25 June 1887
(based on a photograph by Bassano) © The Trustees of the
British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons
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International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)licence.
Series on "Lady Journalists"
- Lady Journalists [First Series]
- Lady Journalists [Second Series]
- Lady Journalists [Third Series]
- Lady Journalists [Fourth Series]
- Lady Journalists [Fifth Series]
Bibliography
Beegan, Gerry. "Women of the World: The Lady's Pictorial and Its Sister Papers". In Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s–1900s, edited by Alexis Easley, Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 232–255.
Fehlbaum, Valerie. "Lady's Pictorial (1880–1921)." In Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland, edited by Laurel Brake and Marsya Demoor. Gent: Academia Press, 2009. 342.
Created 2 January 2025