Journalism
By the end of the nineteenth century, improved educational opportunities, growing literacy rates, and the increasing speed of print production expanded reading audiences like never before.
The proliferation of periodicals, especially, created new publishing opportunities for women. From the 1860s, an explosion of new shilling magazines required an endless stream of stories, book reviews, and essays.
Since the majority of nineteenth century magazine articles were unsigned, many aspiring female writers turned to journalism to develop their writing skills anonymously. Both Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot, for example, wrote for journals before publishing their own works.
The Cornhill Magazine
The Cornhill Magazine was the premier fiction-carrying magazine of the century, publishing the first printings of novels by Anthony Trollope, William Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Gaskell, and Thomas Hardy, among many others.
The first printing of George Eliot’s Romola appeared in monthly installments in The Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August 1863. The publisher, George Smith, offered Eliot 10,000 pounds for the rights to the novel, an unheard of sum at the time. Eliot’s high fee is indicative of both her prominent literary reputation, and of the enormous profits generated by the public appetite for fiction.
The Girl's Own Paper
Magazines aimed at a juvenile audience provided reliable and steady publishing opportunities for women. The Girl’s Own Paper, established a year after its popular sister publication, Boy’s Own Paper, ran for eighty-five years, from 1880 to 1965.
Journalism for Women
This "how to" guide provided aspiring women writers with practical information on how to become successful journalists.