Godey's Ladies' Handbook

The most famous of mid 19th century American magazines of this time frame, included Godey's Ladies' Handbook published from July 1830 without break until 1898. We know it today mostly as Godey's Lady's Book, but it had a variety of captions including:-

Godey's Unrivalled Coloured Fashions,

Latest Fashions for Godey's Lady's Book

Godey's Coloured Fashions

Godey's Ladies Handbook

Godey's Lady's Book was published in Philadelphia in the C19th by Mr. Louis A. Godey. Publishing history was made when he employed widow Mrs. Sarah Hale to edit the magazine. Mrs. Sarah Hale continued to do this until 1877. A forthright opinionated, strong, campaigning woman she believed women could achieve any goals she wanted. This was reflected in her editorial style and the inclusion in Godey's Lady's Book with comparatively superwoman style articles with a C19th slant. Against her judgement it included fashion.

There were fashion plates, fashion articles, stories, poems, how to make various crochet, tatting, lace making, knitting, embroidery and other craft articles, recipes and house keeping hints and tips. If you needed to make a pair of dainty slippers, Godey's was the magazine to find such advice!

At the time of the Civil War etiquette advice was very welcome, especially on births marriages and deaths. But apart from that, Godey's paid little or no attention to matters of politics and carried on as before. Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorn and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow all wrote articles that were published in Godeys.

The fashions were extravagant and generally intended literally for those who were leisurely ladies. This was not a magazine for pioneering women on distant farms and lucky to have one new calico dress a year, but for ladies who aspired to wearing Paris fashions. With any luck the latter may well have already seen all the major cities of Europe and were therefore well able to identify with the opulence of full skirted trailing gowns. New money meant new gowns!

The Civil War interrupted distribution of the magazine and there is a famous line in 'Gone With The Wind' when Scarlett O' Hara despairs for lack of a copy of the latest Godey magazine. The Civil War disrupted distribution of all mail and letters including printed matter. So copies were loaned and passed on to friends and family, which makes them often scarce or in poorer condition than some other magazines of the era.

As so often happened in English and other European publications, many early Godey plates were crude copies from French magazines. Even so the colouring was done by hand, but the quality of the earlier engravings were poorer.

Later by the 1850s engraved French plates were actually imported to America for Godey's magazine. The original engraved plates would have been previously published in Paris up to eleven months earlier. By 1861 Godey's had 150,000 regular readers and some 150 women hand colour tinted the plates with watercolours. There was no consistency with the colouring of plates and it seems a colourist would use an alternative paint colour when the first colour ran out. For this reason Godey's pull out prints have the same engraving, but can have different coloured gowns as many different painters were employed to colour them and many used full artistic licence to get their quota completed.

Source: http://www.fashion-era.com/fashion_plates_old/0005_godeys_ladys.htm