According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "In the 18th century, when women were expected to participate in social and political life, those magazines aimed primarily at women were relatively robust and stimulating in content."[1] Here follows a list of some of the major British periodicals marketed to women in the period. Between them they cover a wide range of material, from Augustan periodicalessays,[2] to advice,[3] to mathematical puzzles,[4] to fashion.[5] Some were written and edited by women and others by men. In many cases, both editorship and individual authorship is obscure.
Adburgham, Alison. Women in print: writing women and women's magazines from the Restoration to the accession of Victoria. London: Allen and Unwin, 1972. ISBN0040700054
Batchelor, Jennie, and Manushag N. Powell, eds. Women's periodicals and print culture in Britain, 1690-1820s: the long eighteenth century. Edinburgh University Press, 2018. ISBN9781474419659
Berry, Helen. Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Athenian Mercury. Taylor & Francis, 2017. ISBN9781351934398, ISBN1351934392
Clery, E. The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England: Literature, Commerce and Luxury. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ISBN9780230509047, ISBN0230509045
Maurer, Shawn L. Proposing men: dialectics of gender and class in the eighteenth-century English periodical. Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN0804733538