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.[1] Costing only one and a half pence, this journal was aimed at the middle and lower classes and was specifically geared towards women.[2] 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.[3]
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.”[4]. She aimed to accomplish this “through materials that provided a steady and free communion with Truth.”[5] 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.”[6]
Cook not only edited the journal, but wrote much of the content herself, having already achieved some prior acclaim as a poet.[7] Eliza Cook’s Journal ran successfully for five years before Cook ceased publication in 1854 due to poor health.[8]
Notes
Submitted by: Christensen, Catherine: section 1, Winter 2011
Articles in category "Eliza Cook's Journal"
The following 4 pages are in this category, out of 4 total.
