ABSTRACT
The material that I have used spans the whole century, in order to discover to what extent the domestic ideology was constructed progressively. To that end, I shall compare the discourse about domestic occupations in the early eighteenth-century essay papers, such as The Visiter (1723-24) or The Female Spectator (1744-46), which have received critical attention, namely from Kathryn Shevelow and Claire Boulard, 1 with their treatment in the second generation of women's periodicals, which have been so far scantily documented:2 The Lady's Magazine (1759-63), The Lady's Magazine or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1770-1832) and The New Lady's
Magazine or Polite and Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1786-95). Their titles prove that the term 'lady' was preferred precisely at the moment when their growing readership included the middle-classes. The price of a monthly issue, 6d., placed the magazines in the category of the 'popular' periodicals, according to Robert D. Mayo,3 that is addressed to the new class who, not only could read, but had also recently acquired reading habits. Moreover the bound yearly volumes were more easily accessible through the lending libraries. The front page announcements of the first issues emphasized the wide social spectrum of potential readers. The Lady s Magazine of 1770 addressed 'the Housewife as well as the Peeress'; The New Ladys Magazine of 1786 described itself as 'the most agreeable Companion to female Readers of every Rank and Condition'. In fact the ideal 'lady' to be fashioned was an idle middle-class woman, carefully differentiated from the artisans' and shopkeepers' wives who had to divide their time between shop and house.
