ABSTRACT
In the 5 July 1869 issue of the Athenaeum, the Girl of the Period Miscellany is advertized as “the Latest Sensation, profusely Illustrated” (775). In a similar advertisement on 10 July, the reader is informed that the Miscellany is available from “all Booksellers and Railway Bookstalls” (35). The ubiquity of the “Girl of the Period” in print and in popular culture was, of course, owing to her provocative nature in mid-Victorian England, and this figure sparked a wide variety of responses from both sides of the political spectrum. The monthly production of the Miscellany emphasized the topicality of the issue of women's freedoms and rights through extensive illustrations as it responded to this “problem” in a provocative, entertaining way. Not a girls’ periodical at all in the traditional sense, the Miscellany was aimed at a largely male audience that would enjoy its satirical and parodic representations of the “Girl of the Period.” As a consequence, the Miscellany highlights the ambiguous definitions of girlhood in the late 1860s and early 1870s, where the “girl of the period” became a label for any girl (or woman) who sought active participation in the public sphere and who demanded opportunities for better education, rights, and legal protection. Moreover, through its extensive illustrations, the “girl” in the Miscellany becomes a visual figure who is no longer contained within the drawing room. Instead, she works and plays in public spaces, and she travels in the hands of the men (and perhaps some women) who purchase the periodical. The Miscellany's depictions of the “girl” engaged in a variety of public activities set the stage for illustrated girls’ magazines in the last decades of the century, such as the Girl's Own Paper and the Girl's Realm, where girls’ culture is described, visualized, and marketed to girls themselves.
