This project introduces The Ladies: A Journal of the Court, Fashion and Society, a London publication that premiered in March 1872 and exited abruptly in January 1873. The first issue is captured in full-page images and "readable bits," close-up images of certain columns. A few articles are transcribed from various issues. Buttons at the bottom of each page take you back to the homepage and to the bibliography. (Look below.) Sources are cited parenthetically by last name and page number; full cites are in the bibliography, which also contains excerpts. The homepage lists the major categories into which I have divided the project. These include subjects such as class concerns, fashion notes, and complaints against the press and factual information such as publication and subscription details. For now, I can only offer a tiny sample of The Ladies, but I hope that these visual and textual excerpts give a taste of the journal's diverse and fascinating offerings, as well as of the ideological confusions of the 1870s.

The Ladies creates a fantasy in which the well-dressed upper-class woman breaks free from the worst of Victorian political and sartorial restraints while still remaining a “lady.” She wears just the right "toilette" for riding, walking, or visiting, but gets the vote and male respect too. She knows how to cure a child's cough and greet the queen. She knows just how much jewelry to wear without appearing gaudy and knows too how to develop photographs in case forced to take a job. The Ladies’ dream of womanhood failed, at least commercially, and the few critics who mention the publication blame its political leanings. After 1850, no periodical espousing women’s rights lasted for more than a year or two, while publications offering the usual mixture of fiction, fashion, and needlework were immediately successful and embarked upon long runs of between twenty-five and thirty years (White 47).

The Ladies captures a transitional moment in both femininity and periodical publishing. Its name clearly marks it as an upper-class publication--the word "ladies" translated into “upper-class women”--but it offers tips on domestic management in the manner of the Englishwoman’s Domestic Journal, the publication that had discovered the middle-class market in the 1850s. The Ladies' concern with fashion and society makes it a precursor to the "ladies" papers that would predominate in the '80s and '90s, and at sixpence it sells at an upper-class price (See Ballaster 86-98, White 41-56). Indeed, The Ladies was too radical for the bourgeois market, too domestic for the "ladies" market, and too early for market specialization. Three years after the journal's demise, the market would explode, and between 1880 and 1900, 48 new titles for women entered the field (White 58). Unlike The Ladies, however, these journals drew the class line clearly: penny weeklies for the lower- and working-class women, good-quality domestic magazines for the middle-class, and weekly ladies' papers for the upper-class (Ballaster 92-3).

The Ladies offered elaborately detailed drawings of current fashions, commentary on Parliamentary proceedings, and editorials on women's rights. Each issue displays a large image of a well-dressed woman on the front page, usually just the head wearing its "Seville chapeau" or "chapeau designed by Maria Ham." The masthead promotes the journal's coloured fashion plates, a big selling point, which come with descriptive keys so that the confused Victorian woman can emulate her equals or her betters. The second page almost always begins with the Chronicle, which like the News, Notes and Comments column contains most of the journal's political commentary. Less prominently displayed are such columns as Good Housekeeping and Domestic Hints.

The journal comments on new books, plays, etc., in Our Book Register, The London Theatres, The Art World, and The Musical World, traces the movements of the royal family and aristocrats in The Court and Society, and reports gossip in Twitterings. The first issue provides a piece of original music, an offering not to be repeated. The Ladies serializes fiction, mostly French, and usually offers at least one poem per issue. Less often, it offers full-page reproductions of artwork, such as a painting of Women Led Into Slavery by M. Luminais in the Aug. 10 issue. Its artwork often accompanies a political essay or otherwise implies a political commentary; for example, Beggars in Brittany in the Sept. 21 issue. Occasionally, The Ladies commissions illustrations to accompany stories on current or historical events, such as the Death of the Duke D'Enghien, also in the Sept. 21 issue, or the illustration of the tramway to accompany a story in the Nov. 30 issue. Visually, however, the fashion illustrations dominate the pages, with the topical illustrations often looking out of place.

The journal likes things, often displaying full-page sketches of fashionable laces or embroidery patterns, two-page spreads of a well-appointed house, and large renderings of various do-dads such as the whatnot. Its advertising also offers a great many things appropriate for the well-to-do home, of course, and its columns offer class-conscious advice on good taste.

The first issue promised to offer employment training, an overly ambitious concept that resulted in essays on such things as developing photographs and creating artificial flowers but which soon died out. Job concerns later found voice in the journal’s support of society’s promoting women's employment and a long series on Work Done by Women in the British Isles. The Ladies tracks the success of strikes in male- and female-dominated industries, wary in general of job actions but supporting a consumer strike to lower food prices.

Alongside its regular features, the journal runs a diverse collection of articles. It follows women’s sports (“Our Ladye Archers”), comments on dress reform (disliking shoes that hurt but rejecting Puritan restrictions), and tracks social and fashion trends on the continent. It offers a series on marriage law as well as notes on dancing. The journal advises how to plan for a pic-nic (don't bring the children) and suggests suitable vacation spots.

The Ladies continually attacks the male-run press, responding to anti-woman comments in the Saturday Review most particularly. It recounts incidents in which men escaped with little punishment for assaulting or molesting women or even selling their wives.

Critics such as Cynthia White and Brian Briathwaite describe The Ladies’ politics as moderate or "mild," considering its demise a demonstration of the 1870s extreme intolerance of women’s rights. Yet despite its class-conscious fashion and society concerns, the journal in its entirety offers a radical new ideology of womanhood. The Ladies believes ladies can have it all, including a snooty attitude.