1. Quoted in Ziff, Larzer, The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation (1966; rpt. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), pp. 121, 122Google Scholar. For a valuable overview of the iconographical revolution, see Harris, Neil, “Iconography and Intellectual History: The Half-Tone Effect,” in New Directions in American Intellectual History, ed. Higham, John and Conkin, Paul K. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), pp. 196–211Google Scholar. Other things made the mass magazine possible, too. As Christopher P. Wilson reminds us in his excellent study, The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), p. 48Google Scholar, “Historians have long been aware of how a series of related developments - the passage of the Postal Act of 1879, technological advances in printing, engraving, and papermaking, and the growth of national advertising itself- opened up new vistas of circulation and increased reliance on advertising as a source of revenue.”

2. Unless otherwise noted, biographical data on Bok and historical information on the Ladies' Home Journal come from Steinberg, Salme Harju, Reformer in the Market Place: Edward Bok and the Ladies' Home Journal (Baton Rouge, La., and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Bok, Edward, The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928)Google Scholar. See also Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines, 1885–1905 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), vol. 4, pp. 536–55.Google Scholar

3. Quoted in Steinberg, , Reformer, p. 2.Google Scholar

4. Bok, Edward, “The Magazine with a Million,” Ladies' Home Journal 20 (02 1903): 16Google Scholar. Readership statistics may be a bit suspect when they come from interested parties like Curtis and Bok. Indeed, both are accused of having exaggerated circulation figures on occasion, since their figures were consistently higher than those certified by N. A. Ayer - though not outrageously so. Where Bok estimated 440,000 subscriptions sold in 1889, Ayer certified 410,000. Despite the discrepancies in circulation counts, the assertions that the Journal reached 1,000,000 households and sold another estimated 250,000 copies on newsstands each month, even if high, are probably accurate enough to support the argument that the magazine had a widespread impact, especially when we consider the fact that it was a family magazine that was most likely read or perused by several members of each household every month. See Mott, , History of American Magazines (vol. 4, pp. 537–39, 545)Google Scholar, for discussion of these matters.

5. For a discussion of the early picture press, see Newhall, Beaumont, The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present, rev. ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art; and Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), pp. 249ff.Google Scholar

6. Bok, , Americanization, pp. 153–54.Google Scholar

7. Bok and Curtis, for example, campaigned during the 1890s against patent medicine advertisers and their fraudulent health claims regarding their products. See Mott, , History of American Magazines, vol. 4, p. 543.Google Scholar

8. More than one transformation would occur in the Journal during Bok's, as well as others', editorial reign. See Stein, Sally, “The Graphic Ordering of Desire: Modernization of a Middle-Class Women's Magazine, 1914–1939,” Heresies 5 (1985): 6–16Google Scholar. Though halftone reproduction technology had existed since the early 1870s, it was — for a number of obscure and complicated reasons - not perfected and exploited by publishers. Gradually, it began to be utilized in the magazines by about 1890 and finally in the newspapers by 1897, when the process was successfully adapted to the high-speed press. For brief discussion of the halftone revolution, see Newhall, , History of Photography, pp. 251–57Google Scholar; and, for an extended overview, see Taft, Robert, Photography and the American Scene (1938; rpt. New York: Dover, 1964), pp. 419–50, esp. p. 427ff.Google Scholar

9. Regarding the number of pages in each issue, the following statistics are pertinent: in 1894, the per-issue page average was 37.6, and each issue ranged between 32 and 44 pages; in 1895, the per-issue average was 37.3, with issues ranging between 32 and 44 pages; in 1896, the average was 38.5, with 32 to 50 pages per issue; in 1897, the average was 39.3, and the per-issue number of pages was between 32 and 52; and, in 1898, the average was 42, with each issue ranging between 36 and 52 pages. The magazine's division of space allocated between the editorial content and the advertising also remained fairly constant. The ads took up between 25 percent and 30 percent of the entire space of the magazine. The statistics are based on my own count in all the issues in volumes 11 through 15. One problem with the counting of images is that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a pictured object or person is from an original photograph or a drawing, either because the reproductions are not very sharp or because the reproduced rendering is so “photographic.” The problem is compounded by the fact that some of the issues examined were only available on microfilm. Still, I think my count is sufficiently accurate to support my claims regarding the increased use of photographs. It should be noted that in at least one instance my figures differ from Steinberg's (see Reformer, p. 28).Google Scholar

10. It is difficult to separate Curtis's hand in the magazine's development from that of Bok's because, as Steinberg makes clear, Curtis was a publisher who kept control of all business matters and advertising policies (see Reformer, chs. 1 and 2, esp. pp. 56–65Google Scholar). Still, while Curtis attended to business, Bok edited and laid out the magazine's contents and was ultimately responsible for what went into the magazine - including the advertising pages. As Curtis's trusted editor and son-in-law, Bok exercised considerable authority.

Advertising was always essential to the magazine's success. Advertising revenues reached $500,000 per year by 1897. For discussion of these matters, see Mott, , History of American Magazines, vol. 4, pp. 539, 545.Google Scholar

For discussion of “ad stripping,” see Wilson, , Labor of Words, p. 57Google Scholar. The Kodak ad appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal 14 (02 1897): 17Google Scholar; and the ads for roses were in the Ladies' Home Journal 15 (03 1898): 32, 33.Google Scholar

Bok once printed a photograph to prove false advertising on the part of the manufacturers of Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. One of their ads claiming that Mrs. Pinkham was still at work in her laboratory in order to help ailing women was graphically refuted by a photograph of her tombstone (see Bok, Edward, “Pictures That Tell Their Own Stories,” Ladies' Home Journal 22 [09 1905]: 15).Google Scholar

11. My typology is a modification of that of Gombrich, E. H., “The Visual Image,” Scientific American 227 (09 1972): 82–96CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See Mitchell, W. T. J., “The Ethics of Form in the Photographic Essay,” Afterimage 16, no. 6 (01 1989): 8–13Google Scholar, for a lucid argument that a photograph is both an analogue and a representation of the world appearing in it.

12. Bok, Edward, “A Common Bond of Sympathy,” Ladies' Home Journal 8 (04 1890): 8.Google Scholar

13. The fuller context of Nye's point is worth quoting here: “Photographs, with their directness and accuracy, seemed to present an object without distortion. They made the unknown product familiar and inserted it in known environments. Consumers could use them to visualize change and possess new products imaginatively” (Nye, David E., Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric [Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1985], p. 32).Google Scholar

14. For discussion of the strenuous-life movement, see Higham, John, “The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s,” in The Origins of Modern Consciousness, ed. Weiss, John (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), pp. 25–44Google Scholar; and Gorn, Elliott J., The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), ch. 6Google Scholar. For discussion of the popularity of the Delsartean method of expression, see Banta, Martha, Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 638–46.Google Scholar

15. The image of the New Woman was appropriated by advertisers during the 1890s in quite sophisticated and morally subversive ways. The imaged “New Woman” was transformed by them from an independent, politically conscious individual into a narcissistic sex object. See, for example, the following corset ads: “Graceful as a New Woman,” Ladies' Home Journal 13 (05 1896): 31Google Scholar; “R & G Corsets,” Ladies' Home Journal 15 (10 1898)Google Scholar: back cover; and “Ferris Good Sense Corset Waist,” Ladies' Home Journal 15 (02 1898)Google Scholar: inside back cover.

16. Booth, A. G., “One Week's Work,” Ladies' Home Journal 15 (10 1898): 21.Google Scholar

17. Black, Alexander, “Photography in Fiction,” Scribner's 18 (1895): 348–60Google Scholar; Black, Alexander, “The Camera and the Comedy,” Scribner's 20 (1896): 605–10Google Scholar; and Black, Alexander, “How to ‘Give a Picture-Play,’” Ladies' Home Journal 15 (10 1898): 25Google Scholar. For discussion of Black's picture-plays, see Fell, John L., Film and the Narrative Tradition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), ch. 6, esp. pp. 130ffGoogle Scholar. Discussion of lantern-slide shows may be found in Szasz, Ferenc M. and Bogardus, Ralph F., “The Camera and the American Social Conscience: The Documentary Photography of Jacob A. Riis,” New York History 55 (1974): 409–36Google Scholar; and Bogardus, Ralph F. and Szasz, Ferenc M., “Reverend G. D. Forssell and His Magic Lantern Shows: A Clue to America's Popular Imagination in the 1890s,” Palimpsest 58 (1977): 111–19Google Scholar. Regarding the stereograph, see Darrah, William Culp, Stereo Views: A History of Stereographs in America and Their Collection (Gettysburg, Pa.: Times & News, 1964), passim.Google Scholar

18. See Wilson, Christopher P., “The Rhetoric of Consumption: Mass Market Magazines and the Demise of the Gentle Reader,” in The Culture of Consumption, ed. Fox, Richard Wightman and Lears, T. J. Jackson (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 39–64Google Scholar. See also Harris, Neil, “The Drama of Consumer Desire,” in Yankee Enterprise: The Rise of the American System of Manufacturers, ed. Mayr, Otto and Post, Robert C. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), pp. 189–216.Google Scholar

19. Baker, W. G. ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (04 1896): 36Google Scholar; Baker, W. G. ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (05 1896): 25Google Scholar; and Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (05 1896): 29.Google Scholar

20. Baker, W. G. ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (06 1896): 22Google Scholar; Baker, W. G. ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (07 1896): 26Google Scholar; Baker, W. G. ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (08 1896): 24Google Scholar; Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (09 1896): 26Google Scholar; Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (10 1896): 32Google Scholar; Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 13 (11 1896): 31Google Scholar; Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 14 (12 1896): 42Google Scholar; Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 14 (03 1897): 34Google Scholar; and Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 14 (05 1897): 28Google Scholar. It is worth emphasizing that Baker permanently abandoned its use of the picture of Japanese tea pickers when it printed its ad featuring porcelain.

21. Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 14 (10 1897): back cover.Google Scholar

22. Ceylon and India ad, Ladies' Home Journal 15 (04 1898): 42.Google Scholar

23. My discussion of American imperialism and 1890s racial politics is based on Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (1963; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1968)Google Scholar, chs. 6 and 7. As regards the two Ceylon and India Tea ads stressing “Purity” and assuring readers that their tea was “handled only in picking” (Ladies' Home Journal 13 [09 1896]: 26Google Scholar; and 14 [May 1897]: 28), the emphasis on cleanliness is notable, for it exposes the racist assumptions that Westerners held regarding the personal habits of nonwhite peoples. Compare those ads with a Pear's soap ad run in Harper's Weekly 43 (09 30, 1899): 968Google Scholar - the “Dewey Number,” they called it - in which the following copy appeared: “The first step towards lightening The White Man's Burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness.”

24. For discussion of the interest in Japonisme, see Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon, 1981), pp. 228ffGoogle Scholar.; and Jordy, William H., American Buildings and Their Architects: Progressive and Academic Ideals at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1972), vol. 3, pp. 187–91, 271–74.Google Scholar

25. Hosiery, Chicago-Rockford ad and Enamel, Neal's ad, Ladies' Home Journal 15 (07 1898): 29, 27Google Scholar; Editors, “The Anecdotal Side of the President”; Bryan, Henry L., “The Declaration of Independence as It Is Today”Google Scholar; Howard, Clifford, “A Peace-Loving People”Google Scholar; and Herbert, Victor, “The President's March,” Ladies' Home Journal 15 (07 1898): 1–2, 3, 4–5, and 12–13Google Scholar; and “The New American Girls,” Ladies' Home Journal 16 (11 1899): 1Google Scholar. For extensive discussion of the “American Girl” image-type, see Banta, , Imaging, passim.Google Scholar