The Lady's Magazine

The Lady's Magazine; or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement, was an early British women's magazine published monthly from 1770 until 1847. Priced at sixpence per copy, it began publication in August 1770 by the London bookseller John Coote and the publisher John Wheble, later, George Robinson (bookseller). It featured articles on fiction, poetry, fashion, music, and social gossip and was, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum, "the first woman's magazine to enjoy lasting success."

The magazine claimed a readership of 16,000, a figure that has been considered high when contemporary literacy levels and underdeveloped printing technologies are taken into account. George Robinson's The Lady's Magazine; or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement dominated the market for most of its run, and led to imitations like the Lady's Monthly Museum and Alexander Hogg's New Lady's Magazine, or, Polite, useful, Entertaining, and fashionable Companion for the Fair Sex.

One of these rivals was published just a few doors down from the shop of the Lady’s Magazine publisher, George Robinson, who worked out of 25 Paternoster Row. Alexander Hogg, who in the 1780s worked out of no. 16, launched the disingenuosly named New Lady’s Magazine in February 1782 much to the anger of Robinson who waged a war of words with the scurrilous Hogg in the newspapers, at publisher gatherings and on the pavement of the Row itself. Robinson had good reason to be angry given that the New Lady’s Magazine (1782-96?) filled many (though not all) of its pages with content originally written and published in the Lady’s Magazine.