Ladies' Magazine

{{Short description|Defunct American women's magazine}}

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{{About|an American women's magazine|the Russian magazine of the same name|Ladies' Magazine (1823–1833)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}

The Ladies' Magazine, an early women's magazine, was first published in 1828 in Boston, Massachusetts.{{cite book|author=Jennifer Nelson|title=Airbrushed Nation: The Lure and Loathing of Women's Magazines|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=utaxs47aIJsC&pg=PT40|accessdate=July 28, 2015|date=October 1, 2012|publisher=Seal Press|isbn=978-1-58005-463-8|page=40}}{{cite book|author1=Roxanne Hovland|author2=Joyce M. Wolburg|author3=Eric E. Haley|title=Readings in Advertising, Society, and Consumer Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dj3fBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA188|accessdate=July 28, 2015|date=December 18, 2014|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-46136-4|page=188}} Also known as Ladies' Magazine and Literary Gazette and later as American Ladies' Magazine, it was designed to be American, and named to separate itself from the Lady's Magazine of London. The magazine was founded by Reverend John Lauris Blake, Congregational minister and headmaster of the Cornhill School for Young Ladies, who desired to set a model for American womanhood.Greenberg, Hope A., [http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/godey/hale.html Sarah Josepha Hale Biography], Godey's Lady's Book.

It is thought to have been the first magazine to be edited by a woman; from 1828 until 1836, its editor was Sarah Josepha Hale.Entrikin, Isabelle Webb, Sarah Josepha Hale and Godey's Lady's Book, Philadelphia, 1946. As editor, Hale hoped she could aid in the education of women, as she wrote, "not that they may usurp the situation, or encroach on the prerogatives of man; but that each individual may lend her aid to the intellectual and moral character of those within her sphere".Rose, Anne C. Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981: 24. {{ISBN|0-300-02587-4}}.

Ladies' Magazine was acquired by Louis Antoine Godey in 1836.{{cite web|title=Godey's Lady's Book|url=http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/godeys-ladys-book/|work=Accessible Archives|accessdate=19 June 2015}} In 1837 it merged with the Lady's Book and Magazine published in Philadelphia by Godey and better known by its later name, Godey's Lady's Book. Hale moved from Boston to Philadelphia to edit the new, combined magazine.