Victoria Magazine, The. All Faithfulls in 2 large slipcases.
The First Issue
[Faithfull, Emily]. (Emily Faithfull, ed.) The Victoria Magazine. /Vol. I./May-October. London…: Victoria Press…, 1863.
Large, thick 8vo; 576 pp; green endpapers; green contemporary half-morocco; marbeled boards; spine and tips lightly rubbed, else fine.
First edition of the first volume of Faithfull’s popular magazine, published monthly from May 1863 until June 1880. A massive undertaking, literally and figuratively, for Faithfull, this volume contains contributions by T.A. Trollope, Christina Rossetti, George MacDonald, Nassau Senior, and many others, including some anonymous contributions such as “Needleworkers and Society” that sound suspiciously like topics Faithfull in which Faithfull was vested. Contains a true miscellany, including light poetry and prose as well as essays on such topics as “Englishwomen in India,” “Social Science,” and “Sisterhoods, On.”
In his book on Faithfull (The Caxton of Her Age…, London: Images Publishing, 1993), Eric Ratcliffe discusses the covertly transgressive nature of Faithfull’s popular periodical and its differences from the traditional women’s magazines of the time:
What she [Faithfull] published for women was worth a lot more in the future to them than items put out by other publishers. The latter had their uses … but were of more immediate impact, very much to aid sales without consideration of their need to battle against male prerogatives.
[In Faithfull’s magazine] even for the most home-bound woman, in any periodical, would be snippets of other vistas, some risqué story perhaps which a staid society would consider improper for a lady to read too far out of the range set for her by a male-oppressive system. A series of short messages, propoganda, widened literary vistas, did much more by short bursts of entry into the domestic environment than the latest “forbidden” book snuggled under the pillow or covered with bottom-drawer linen…If she did not succeed completely, she [Faithfull] dynamited the way open for others in a way that domestic literature could not and never wanted to…(p. 14)
A handsome copy of the premiere issue of an extremely influential periodical. Scarce: Fredeman states that there is no complete run in England and that there are only three in American libraries. Faithfull collector Robin de Beaumont remarks that this volume is the only issue he has ever seen of Faithfull’s uncommon and significant periodical.
(#5194)
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