View source for Category:Eliza Cook's Journal

'''Title:''' ''Eliza Cook's Journal''

'''Editor:''' Eliza Cook

'''Publisher:''' John Owen Clarke

In 1849, Eliza Cook began a weekly miscellany, eponymously titled ''Eliza Cook’s Journal''. It realized immediate success, selling fifty to sixty thousand issues through its first year—an even higher circulation than Dickens’ ''Household Words''.<ref>[[Works Cited |WD]]</ref> Costing only one and a half pence, this journal was aimed at the middle and lower classes and was specifically geared towards women.<ref>[[Works Cited |WD]]</ref> Popular content ranged from didactic fiction, inspirational poetry and maxims, to book reviews, informational essays, and home improvement tips. Some issues even included stories and poems for children, a common trend in many women’s journals.<ref>[[Works Cited |DNB]]</ref> 

Like many Victorian writers and editors of the time, Cook sought for more than just entertainment from her journal; she hoped to give "her feeble aid to the gigantic struggle for intellectual improvement going on.”<ref>[[Works Cited |WD]]</ref>. She aimed to accomplish this “through materials that provided a steady and free communion with Truth.”<ref>[[Works Cited |DNB]]</ref> Cook advocated a range of reforms, addressing such topics as marriage laws, education and employment practices, and the suffering of the poor. She wrote with a “curious blend of radicalism and conservatism”; for instance, while in favor of women’s employment, new marriage laws, and higher respect for single women, she stopped short of women’s suffrage thinking it potentially “harmful in its effects.”<ref>[[Works Cited |WD]]</ref>

Cook not only edited the journal, but wrote much of the content herself, having already achieved some prior acclaim as a poet.<ref>[[Works Cited |DLB]]</ref> ''Eliza Cook’s Journal'' ran successfully for five years before Cook ceased publication in 1854 due to poor health.<ref>[[Works Cited |DNB]]</ref>

== Notes ==
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Submitted by: [[Christensen, Catherine: section 1, Winter 2011]]

[[Category:Journals|Eliza Cook's Journal]]