Ladies' Home Journal

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The Ladies' Home Journal is a magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, as a women's supplement to the Tribune and Farmer, published by Cyrus H. Curtis. It arose from a popular "women's column" written by his wife, Louisa Knapp.^[1] The following year it became an independent publication. Its original name was The Ladies Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper, but it dropped the last three words in 1886.^[2] It rapidly became the leading magazine of its type, reaching a circulation of more than one million copies in ten years.^[3]

It was published by the Curtis Publishing Company and edited by Louisa Knapp, until she was succeeded by Edward William Bok in 1889. In 1892, it became the first magazine to refuse patent medicine ads.^[4] At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine published the work of social reformers and muckrakers like Jane Addams.

One of the magazine's most popular and enduring features is "Can This Marriage Be Saved?", in which each half of a couple in a troubled marriage explains the problem, and a marriage counselor explains the solutions offered in counseling and the outcome.^[5]

An article in the late 1970s featured Elizabeth Taylor, who was shown in a large picture on the cover, wearing a red gingham dress--no hint of her figure, just her face, hair and shoulders, and one arm raised with a hand in her hair.

In 1986, The Ladies' Home Journal was acquired by the Meredith Corporation.^[6]

In the late 1950s, Mad Magazine satirized the periodical, in what is likely their harshest satire ever: "Ladies' Home Journey, the Magazine Women Wallow In." Several "articles" in this satire shared the theme that a woman marries a man only to wear him down until he dies so she can play the vulture and get his money--even as stated in Mad's introduction to the article.