1867 Hand-Colored Engraving From Godey’s Ladies Book, “Godey’s Fashion’s for May 1867”

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Beautiful hand-colored engraving with a gilt bamboo frame and black linen mat. Godey's Lady's Book was an American women's magazine … Read more Beautiful hand-colored engraving with a gilt bamboo frame and black linen mat. Godey's Lady's Book was an American women's magazine that was published in Philadelphia from 1830 to 1898. It was the most widely circulated magazine in the period before the Civil War. Sarah Josepha Hale was its editor from 1837 until 1877. Famously known for her poem, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Hale published articles by some of the most well known authors of the time. During this time, she became one of the most important and influential arbiters of American taste. Godey's, was the purveyor of American high fashion and lifestyle of the day. It is credited as having the single greatest influence on women’s fashion from the Civil War through the early years of the Gilded Age.

Hale became an early advocate of higher education for women, and helped to found Vassar College. She devoted three issues of Godey’s to only female writers. During her tenure, several important female writers contributed to the magazine, including Lydia Sigourney, Caroline Lee Hentz, Elizabeth F. Ellet, Eliza Cook, and Frances Sargent Osgood. Other notable contributors included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, William Gilmore Simms, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. See less