The Lady's Magazine

Artist associated with 36 portraits
The Lady's Magazine, Or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (London) was an early monthly periodical for women, which dominated the market for most of its run. It aimed to amuse and improve, providing fiction, poetry, music and social gossip as well as giving more space to fashion than its predecessors. Its first issue in August 1770 included as its frontispiece a plate titled 'A Lady in Full Dress in Augt. 1770', and it became the first magazine in any country to regularly issue plates showing contemporary fashions. The early engravings were uncoloured, until about 1790 when hand-coloured ones were included. In 1832 it merged with The Lady's Monthly Museum to become The Lady's Magazine and Museum of the Belles Lettres, Fine Arts, Music, Drama, Fashions, etc. From about 1785 its plates had been copied from those in French magazines such as Le Journal des Dames et des Modes and La Gallerie des Modes, but it now began importing them from Le Follet, becoming the first British magazine to use French plates instead of engraving its own. It continued to import them when it merged with The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée in 1837 to becomeThe Court Magazine and Monthly Critic and Lady's Magazine, and Museum of the Belles Lettres, music, fine arts, drama, fashions, &c. (1838-1847).

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