ABSTRACT
Using the New York Magazine, or Literary Repository 1 as representative of late eighteenth-century American magazines, David Paul Nord asserts that “magazine reading in this era seems to have been a more broadly democratic activity than has usually been supposed.” 2 He initially acknowledges that “the magazine’s content would seem to be evidence of rather an elite audience,” but by looking at the content in conjunction with the subscriber list, he contends that the reading public included not just the George Washingtons, John Jays, and Noah Websters of the period, but a larger readership that expanded well into the middling classes, excluding only those at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. This swath of readership also included at least some women. Seven women subscribed in their own names to the New York Magazine, and Nord believes the readership was “heavily female.” 3 Several women also contributed, one of whom wrote to praise the magazine’s efforts and wish it success. Moreover, Nord points out that roughly “11 percent of the articles in 1790 either had a woman as the main character or had a clearly identified female author, and many more were obviously aimed at and probably written by women.” 4 Though Nord’s analysis is primarily class- rather than gender-oriented, he believes women readers contributed toward a democratization of reading not just for the New York Magazine, but for magazine reading in general.
