‘Women in Conference’: Reading the Correspondence Columns in Woman 1890–1910

Abstract

To date it has been extremely difficult to establish anything very tangible about the real readers of nineteenth-century popular periodicals (see Ellegård, 1957). Archival resources, such as company records or subscriber lists are scarce, if not non-existent, and few biographies or memoirs mention such ephemeral reading matter as women’s weeklies. The publication of names and addresses of readers participating in Woman’s weekly competitions offers a unique, if limited, research tool. Exhaustive work on several hundred names has to date resulted in the following information: names and addresses would appear to be genuine; certain names appear regularly and over extended periods of time. Woman’s claim to be read by the middle- and upper-class woman seems to be upheld during the 1890s, although by the 1900s there is evidence of a shift away from the more affluent areas of London, and the emergence of many ‘care of addresses implies a downward swing in social class of the readership. This information, however, represents only one section of the readership and so it must be treated with caution.