MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL: Becoming Beautiful in 19th century Women’s Magazines with Michelle Smith

Girls’ and women’s magazines flourished in the 19th century, coinciding with the birth of print advertising and the emergence of department stores. Women eagerly consulted their pages to see the latest fashion plates and corsets, as well as advertisements for beauty products that promised to cure everything from freckles to frizzy hair.

This lecture will discuss how these magazines show the birth of modern ideas of beauty but also caution girls and women on the perils of vanity.

MICHELLE SMITH is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne who specialises in girls’ literature. She is the author of Empire in British Girls’ Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880-1915 and is currently working on a project comparing Australian, Canadian and New Zealand girls’ print culture from 1840-1940.

Prize Chignons from ‘The Horticultural’, Girl of the Period Miscellany, 1869.