Godey’s Lady’s Book

This colorful Philly publication was America’s top-selling magazine in 1860

***150 women applied water colors to produce these beautiful fashion plates for Godey’s Lady’s Book. From the collection of the Milwaukee Public Library, Richard E and Lucile Krug Rare Books Room.***

Godey’s Lady’s Book was a major trendsetter in the U.S.

Edited by Sarah Josepha Hale, the magazine was one of the most expensive publications in the U.S. to both buy and produce. At $3 a year, it cost more than the Saturday Evening Post, and by 1850, had a whopping circulation of 150,000 copies … and an estimated readership of one million persons. One website says Godey’s had twice the circulation of any publication in the country!

The University of Texas at Tyler described the magazine as “being full of fashions, etiquette, receipts, patterns, house plans, crafts, helpful hints, health advice, short stories, poetry, book notices, and musical scores, all designed to inform ‘women’ how to be ‘ladies.’ ”

Godey’s production costs exceeded $105,000

Publisher Louis Godey reportedly boasted in 1859 that it cost $105,200 to produce the magazine, with the coloring of fashion-plates costing $8,000.

***When the women painters ran out of one color, they used another. So different subscribers could receive different-looking plates and compare the looks.***

Some 150 women at home and at the plant applied a watercolor to each plate. If they ran out of the right color, they just substituted another. Godey said this variety gave readers an opportunity to compare plates and see how a garment looked in various shades.

Interesting Oddities

Hale felt the fashion plates were frivolous. Godey chose to keep them, and they were a very popular and much anticipated part of the publication, says “Past is Present,” the blog of American Antiquarian Society.
Godey reportedly also was the first publisher to copyright his magazine. Weekly papers that “clipped” stories from other publications were not pleased.
A woman of many talents, Hale edited Godey’s Lady’s Book for over 40 years, wrote more than 50 books and helped found Vasser College. She moved to Philadelphia in 1841 and a historic marker about Hale is located at 922 Spruce Street, one of her homes in Philadelphia.
Among major American authors who wrote for Hale’s magazine were: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving.

***Sara Josepha Hale. (1788–1879); Source: Richard’s Free Library, Newport, New Hampshire.*** ***http://www.newport.lib.nh.us/***.

Hale wrote and first published the popular nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as a poem in 1830, reportedly basing it on an incident at a school where she taught. In 1876, another person, Mary Tyler, claimed she was the Mary in the poem, but without any evidence.

Thomas Edison reportedly spoke the opening lines of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on his newly invented phonograph in 1877, says Wikipedia, making them the first speech sounds ever recorded.
Hale also is credited with convincing President Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. It just took her 17 long years of writing to five presidents before she succeeded.