In 1837, Louis Godey made the smartest business decision of his career. He hired Sarah Josepha Hale to be the editor of his magazine, Godey’s Ladies Book. Apart from the magazine, little is known about Louis Godey. He was born in New York City to poor immigrant parents. He had no formal education, but at age fifteen he went to work in the newspaper business. Eventually, he moved to Philadelphia where he was the editor of the Daily Chronicle, and in 1830 he published the first edition of Lady’s Book in which he reprinted pictures and articles out of London society magazines. Lady’s Book was modestly successful. Godey claimed around 10,000 subscribers by 1837. That is when he met Sarah Josepha Hale.

Hale, a widow and mother of five, was the editor of a Boston periodical called Ladies Magazine. Godey purchased the periodical and enticed Hale to move to Philadelphia giving her creative control of the now titled Godey’s Ladies Book. Under Hale’s leadership, subscriptions to Godey’s increased more than tenfold. By 1857, subscriptions numbered 120,000 and the readership of Godey’s included a majority of the women in the United States. In an era where women had few educational choices, fewer career choices, and no political rights, Hale, used poetry, short stories, children’s literature, and articles on housekeeping, cooking, and fashion to educate and give a political voice, albeit a subtle one, to disenfranchised American women. In the process she remade nineteenth century American culture ushering in new traditions and a new outlook on the role of women.

In the nineteenth century, ladies’ magazines proliferated, and Godey’s Ladies Book led the pack. Godey’s was the model for every lady’s magazine that came after it and Hale created the model. She had a three-part purpose- education, entertainment, and employment. Hale used subtlety and sentimentality to create new norms for women and give them legitimacy. Helen Woodward called Godey’s a “trade paper” arguing that the magazine was sensible and useful and contained “technical information” women could use to be better at their job which consisted of home, husband, and children. Hale used the magazine as an educational tool. She encouraged “real reading with concentration.” She published women writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe of whom Hale wrote no one was more proficient a writer. Hale was no revolutionary, however. She believed that women and men’s roles “though equal in dignity and importance, can never be identical.” Thus, she was an avowed anti-suffragist claiming that politics was the dirty business of men and that women had a higher moral calling.

Because of her anti-suffrage stand historians often overlook Hale as a proponent of women’s rights. She is a victim of anachronism, or the imposition of modern moral standards on the past. A recent article discussed Hale’s “polarizing opposition” to women’s enfranchisement, but it is impossible to understand Hale and the content in Godey’s without understanding the times. Hale was born in the era of the Republican Mother where women’s education was valued and their intellectual equality to men recognized. However, Godey’s was popular in the Victorian Era when women were encouraged to embrace the cult of domesticity. Arguably, however, Hale created the conditions in America that allowed the suffrage movement to advance and succeed. In her own words, she created “a work conducive to the advancement of woman.” Within the pages of Godey’s, she encouraged them to embrace their intellect and talent, she educated them and showed them their worth.

Despite Hale’s influence the historiography on her is decades old and often lacking in substance. In the 1920s, shortly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, there was some interest in Hale. In 1928, Martin Lawrence noted that her influence was so great that many people called Godey’s Ladies Book “Mrs. Hale’s Magazine.” A year later Bertha M. Stearns said that Hale “did much to make women intelligent readers.” In 1931, Ruth Finley wrote the first full-length biography on Hale, rich with primary sources. Hale received minimal attention in the historical record for several decades until Norma Fyatt revived interest in her with a biography entitled, Sarah Josepha Hale: The Life and Times of a Nineteenth-Century Career Woman (1975). She argued that Hale was a pioneer in the public sphere and a role model for modern working mothers. This ushered in a renewed interest, throughout the 1980s and 90s, in the way Godey’s created a culture of fashion, femininity, and domesticity. In the last two decades, however, Hale has emerged as an artist and an activist. Several historians have focused on the art and literature published in Godey’s giving Hale credit for publishing the earliest works of American literature. Other articles have argued that despite Louis Godey’s insistence that the magazine remain apolitical, Hale used female sentimentality and even fashion as a guise for political persuasion, creating unity and a renewed American patriotism.

Building on these later works and using an abundance of available primary sources this project will investigate Hale’s writing, her personal poetry and prose as well as editorials in both Ladies’ Magazine and Godey’s Ladies Book and her content choices for the magazines. Working within the theoretical framework of Benedict Anderson’s assertion that print capital helped create the hegemonic concepts of nationalism this research will consider how Hale used Godey’s as a platform to foster female identity, promote partisan political ideas, and remake American society.

Bibliography

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Finley, Ruth Elbright . The Lady of Godey’s, Sarah Josepha Hale. Lippincott Company, 1938.

Fryatt, Norma R. Sarah Josepha Hale : The Life and Times of a Nineteenth-Century Career Woman. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1975.

Hale, Sarah Josepha. Editorial, Ladies Magazine. Sept. 1831.

Hansen, Jordan. “‘People Who Fill the Spaces’: Jodi Picoult and the Sarah Josepha Hale Award.” Humanities 12, no. 2 (February 23, 2023): 21.

Martin, Lawrence. “‘The Genesis of Godey’s Lady’s Book.’” New England Quarterly 1, no. 1 (1928): 41–47.

Shevelow, Kathryn. Women and Print Culture : The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical. London ; New York, N.Y.: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1989.

Sommers, Joseph Michael. “ Godey’s Lady’s Book: Sarah Hale and the Construction of Sentimental Nationalism.” College Literature 37, no. 3 (2010): 43–61.

Stearns, Bertha M. “Early New England Magazines for Ladies.” The New England Quarterly 2, no. 3 (July 1929): 420.

Woodward, Helen. The Lady Persuaders. New York: Obolensky, 1960.