American Woman

AMERICAN WOMAN apparently began in the late nineteenth century and survived at least into the 1920's. With the May, 1923 issue it changed its name to THE AMERICAN NEEDLEWOMAN and continued under that title until at least 1927. It has been difficult finding specific information about this title.

This magazine was one of the Augusta, Maine, "mail-order magazines," so-called because they were printed cheaply and sold for very little (or given away) as a way to get advertisements for mail-order goods to the potential customers, namely the housekeeping women all over the country. They were aimed at rural women (as opposed to the urban women who bought DELINEATOR or even LADIES HOME JOURNAL) and in a way provided a lifeline to many of them stuck in remote and lonely farms and villages.

AMERICAN WOMAN was printed on cheap pulp paper (think, Newsprint) readily available from the forests and mills around Augusta. It was approximately Folio or Tabloid in size, running 10.9 x 15.3 inches up to and including September 1920, and about 10.9 x 13.5 inches from October 1920. The August 1918 issue contained twenty pages (including covers) and carried a good bit of fiction, notes for Homemakers, how to make a lace yoke, snappy ways to prepare fish for dinner ("Use More Fish"), and lots of advertisements for clothing, books, nostrums, furniture, dress patterns, and pages of premiums available to readers who sold subscriptions to the magazine to their friends and neighbors. You can read more about this magazine in the AMERICAN WOMAN Profile pages.