Day 24 (final day!) of my #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar. Thank you for all the lovely comments and I hope it has piqued your interest. Today I bring you an image and a free gift! Pattern for a winter shawl from December 1796. The free gift? Today I launch phase two of https://ladysmagazine.omeka.net with another (fully searchable) 100 Georgian/Regency #needlework patterns from the #ladysmag for you to enjoy. #openaccess #digitalhistory @fiberarts @histodon. Wishing everyone peace and happiness!

Day 23 (of 24!) of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar is one of the hundreds of word puzzles (enigmas and rebuses) the magazine published. Can you solve “A Dish of Fruit”? The full text can be read in alt text if you click on the image (I’ll post the answer tomorrow). #wordgames #puzzles #crypticcrosswords

Day 22 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar: Carriage Dress from October 1813. Not only do I love this frock but I love the self-referentiality of the plate, which sees the sitter holding a copy of the magazine in her hand. #dresshistory #womensmagazines #periodicals

Day 21 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar: In the 19th century, Patrick Bronte burned volumes of the Lady's Magazine from the 1790s that had belonged to his deceased wife Maria, and which Charlotte Bronte cherished as a teenager. He feared the magazine contained 'foolish love stories'. Patrick Bronte likely never read the Lady's Magazine which was deeply cynical about love and candid about marital disharmony or spousal abuse, the subject of this short story, 'The Assault' from April 1798.

Day 20 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar is Rynwick (sometimes Renwick or Rhynwick) Williams. Williams, popularly known as The Monster, was a Welsh florist, who was convicted in 1790 of stabbing around 50 women in the thighs, buttocks and face in the London streets. The magazine (unusually) covered his trial, which had caused a media frenzy.

Day 19 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar: Travel Writing, both domestic and international, was hugely popular in this periodical. Domestic travel series or one-off pieces seem often to have been original, but the magazine also published abridged and extracted versions of expensive travel writing volumes which it “adapted for the ladies”, including its 5-year serialization of Cook’s third voyage, from which this engraving is taken. #travelwriting #Georgian #CaptainCook #imperialism

Day 18 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar: I am fascinated about the culture of pseudonymity and the many different (and often serious or radical) uses to which it was put by contributors. Then there are other kinds of pseudonym. The double pun here in this letter to the magazine’s medical columnist (Dr Turnbull, the successor to Dr Cook) is something else. Fanny Rash has impetuously plunged her face into a bowl of water and needs advice #innuendo #psedonymity #histodon #bookstadon

Day 17 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar is Mary Pilkington (1761-1825), a prolific writer of children’s books, biography, novels for the Minerva and other presses and periodical writing. This former governess turned to writing to support herself and her mother after her father and husband died. Pilkington’s role as section editor for the Lady’s Monthly Museum (1798-1828) is widely known but not her more than 10 years writing for the Lady’s Magazine. She is one of my favourite of its writers.

Day 16 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar. It's also the 247th birthday of #JaneAusten. So I bring you her aunt, Mrs Leigh Perrot. This lovely portrait appeared in the April 1800 issue to accompany a transcript of her trial at Taunton Assizes for stealing a card of lace from the Bath haberdasher, Elizabeth Gregory. She was acquitted after just 15 minutes of deliberation.

Day 15 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar: The monthly “To Our Correspondents” columns in the Lady’s Magazine are every bit as interesting to me as the contents proper. They offer invaluable insights into the periodical’s editorial policies, it’s readers and authors. Editors could be caustic, though. Anna Maria’s submission on an elegy on her deceased canary clearly won her no friends at the magazine. She was urged to use the paper it was written on it to light the bird’s funeral pyre. Ouch!

Day 14 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar: The annual frontispieces for the Lady’s Magazine are a bit of an obsession of mine. This one (for 1785) was one of many illustrations for the magazine by Edward Burney, brother of the incomparable novelist, playwright and diarist Frances Burney. Burney’s niece and editor, Charlotte Barrett, also wrote for the magazine.

Day 13 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar (bit late sorry!): There is surely a novel to be written about this October 1806 fashion plate. Fashionable Riding and Full Dress. #fashionhistory #dresshistory #womenshistory #georgian #19thcentury

Day 12 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar. Each month, the magazine published a song sheet set for piano and sometimes guitar. Much of the music is well known (Handel etc) but sometimes (as in this case) readers sent in music or words to be set to music that they had composed themselves.

Day 11 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar is a marmoset and a porcupine. Just two of the incredibly beautiful engravings produced monthly for Ann Murray’s natural philosophy series, The Moral Zoologist (1800-1805). Murray (also known as Mentoria after a previous publication) had been a preceptress to the royal household. This was an original series for the Lady’s Magazine.

Day 10 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar. It is a below freezing day here in the UK, so I couldn’t resist a needlework for that most elegant and useful of #Georgian or #Regency wear: a muff. This gorgeous pattern from the October 1775 issue would have made quite an impression and let the wearer keep warm while contemplating spring. #needlework #embroidery #fashionhistory @fiberarts @histodons

Day 9 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar: Hoping folks are liking this. Had some lovely feedback so far. Today a 1775 recipe of the non-culinary kind. Here we have a cure for sore, cracked nipples for #breastfeeding mothers. Not the quicklime and plantain water or gold leaf commonly prescribed, but the oil that drips off mild cheese when you toast it applied with a feather. Yep. #medicalhistory

Day 8 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar is photoshopping #19thcentury style. This text from the March 1832 Lady's Magazine explains that, for a fee, readers could their faces appear in the magazine's fashion plates. Fees were 5 guineas for a full length figure, 3 guineas for a half. I wonder if any of your ancestors or mine ever appeared in one...? #photoshopping #womensmagazines #RegencySelfies

Day 7 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar is a 1775 portrait of Jane Butterfield. It was commissioned to accompany an account of her trial for murdering her elderly lover, William Scawen, by poison. Some years previously to this, Scawen had used a female agent to seduce the 14-year-old Butterfield from her parental home. Butterfield was acquitted, and her testimony given in full to the magazine's readers as it 'most peculiarly interest[ed] the female sex'.#WomensHistory #WomenOnTrial

Day 6 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar is a copperplate engraving from an original by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun of Marie Antoinette. It is a common misconception that the Lady's Magazine was uninterested in news and politics or apolitical. Nothing could be further from the truth, although its politics is sometimes hard to decipher. The magazine had a monthly news column and it reported on major news events. 1/

For Day 5 of the #LadysMagazineAdventCalendar we have a letter from a reader, called Caroline from the third ever issue of the magazine in November 1770. Caroline begins by criticising the number of men occupying the periodical's columns and then proceeds to beg for marital advice. Caroline is married to an tyrannical husband, unjustly jealous men and the time she spends breastfeeding her infant son. 1/