Teaching Women’s Roles in Eighteenth-Century Magazines: Suggested Readings and Final Project

CURRICULUM OPTIONS

By Susan Carlile (Professor, California State University, Long Beach)

Below are sample readings with topics for a course, unit, or class period focused on eighteenth-century print culture. This list complements the article “Early Social Media, Women, and Teaching the Eighteenth-Century Magazine” (link to article forthcoming in 2026). The material could be taught as a whole and in any order, or individual installments could be chosen. If access to a rare book or special collections library is possible, the opportunity to read entire magazines in their original form adds greatly to students’ appreciation. In addition to the activities below, facilitating a simple scavenger hunt, even with digitized periodicals, to look for common parts of a magazine is a good orientation.[1] For example, students can be asked to identify elements such as: table of contents, a fictional persona, serialized installments, evidence of authorship, an index, types of genres represented, and common topics based on titles.

1 Day: Overview of Eighteenth-Century Periodical Studies

  • Manushag N. Powell. “New Directions in Eighteenth-Century Periodical Studies.” Literature Compass 8, no. 5 (2011), pp. 240–57.

and/or

  • Margaret Ezell. “Introduction: Early English Periodicals and Early Modern Social Media Forms,” Early English Periodicals and Early Social Media (Cambridge University Press, 2024), pp. 1-15.

1 Day: Editor OR Author?

Students answer an anchor question[2] of their choice for each of the following selections:

1 Day: Editor AS Author

Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator.

Students answer an anchor question of their choice for each of these selections:

  • “The Author’s Intent,” The Female Spectator No. 1 (April 1744)
  • “Taste” (an exchange between the Female Spectator and Philo-Natura) [No. 15, June 1745] (Includes: “Letter from Philo-Natura,” “Haywood’s Response to Philo-Natura,” “Haywood’s Response to Mrs. Sarah Old Fashioned,” “Letter from Leucothea,” “Haywood’s Response to Leucothea.” From “Selections from The Female Spectator by Eliza Haywood,” ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks (Oxford University Press, 1999).

1 Day: From Periodical Essay to Magazine: Five Lady’s Magazines by 1770

Skim each and compare format, style, and types of topics. Then, answer a different anchor question for three issues to report in class.

  • The Lady’s Magazine; or, the Compleat Library 18 (October 7, 1738), ECCO.
  • The Lady’s Weekly Magazine 1 (February 19, 1747)
  • The Ladies Magazine; or, the Universal Entertainer 5 (December 30, 1749), ECCO
  • The Lady’s Magazine; or, The Polite Companion 1 (September 9, 1759)
  • The Lady’s Magazine; or, Entertaining Companion 1 (August 1770), ECCO

6 Total Days: The Magazine as Curriculum

The Lady’s Museum (1760-1),https://ladysmuseum.com/ and Lennox, Charlotte. Sophia, ed. Norbert Schürer (Broadview Press, 2008).

1 Day: Marketing to and Constructing Gender: A Comparison

Compare the following, using anchor questions:

2 Days: Using Periodicals for Publicity: Phillis Wheatley Peters (PWP)

PWP’s Campaign to Publish Poems:

  • Compare the following:
    • “On the Decease of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield” (Derby Mercury, March 22, 1771)
  • Compare the following:
    • The Gentleman’s Magazine (September 1773), p. 456.
  • Review the contents of these to consider the context in which readers read PWP poems:
    • “Hymn to the Morning,” London Magazine (September 1773), p. 456
    • “To Maecenas” Scots Magazine (September 1773), 484
    • Full page spread for “This Day was published [Poems]” with biography, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” and “Thoughts on the Works of Providence,” London Chronicle (September 16,1773), p. 277

Final Project

Eighteenth-century readers made commonplace books by cutting out texts from magazines to paste into their own personally designed books that included drawing and writing by the creator and by her or his friends. Create your own commonplace book and write a Critical Introduction that engages with scholars of eighteenth-century periodicals to explain how you ordered the entries and designed your book, as well as what you learned about eighteenth-century magazines, women’s roles, and their similarities or differences with today’s social media.

[1] Open-access and other subscriber resources include: ECCO, Adam Matthew’s Eighteenth-Century Journals portal, and Archive.org.

[2] Potential anchor questions:

  • What does this piece assume about readers’ gender, class, and culture and does it in some way ask for change? Is this piece working in an activist capacity? If so, how?
  • What comparisons can you make between eighteenth-century magazines and today’s social media?
  • What percentage of these articles/an entire magazine offer(s) intellectual rather than moral improvement? In which cases is a piece suggestive about which gender is more interested in one type of improvement over another?
  • How does this magazine/article make particular assumptions about its readers’ class, interests, knowledge…what else? Where do we see illusions to trans identity/culture?
  • Does the content engage with transgender, intersex (“hermaphrodite” was used but is misleading and stigmatizing) or cross dressing (“transvestite” was used, but is dated and offensive) people?
  • How do authors seem to be using magazines to make their own marks on their societies and to imagine, and even prod into existence, a better world? And when they do so, what better world are they imagining?
  • In courses where the main topic does not lend itself to comparisons with social media, different types of questions could be posed, such as: What does the magazine form offer that other eighteenth-century texts do not?