Glossy Time Capsules #30
WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION
January, 1909
Price: 15 cents
I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited! This is our oldest Glossy Time Capsule yet! By a long shot, even -- the previous record-holder was from 1931. And yet... I wonder... what I can really have to say about a magazine of this age? I love the Edwardian period. How can I, in good conscience, make fun of the things contained within?
Oh, don't worry. It'll be ever so easy.
Women's Home Companion was published between 1873 and 1957, with its heyday in the 1930s and 40s. Though primarily aimed at women, it (at least in 1909) had special sections for children and adolescents as well. And according to the letters to the editor, men read the WHC too.
This magazine seemed to boast a little bit of everything....
Make-Money-Quick Schemes...
Ads for quaint and/or bizarre household products and foodstuffs...
Can host an army of tiny dancing devils, but cannot explode. That's all my fears allevitated!
Something's missing up there... but what?
Cresolene: It's not a toxic substance! Really!
Stories & Articles...
Remember, though... "can" and "should" are not the same.
In the end, the contents of this 1909 magazine aren't that different from those of the many magazines that came afterward. The men's mustaches may be a little bushier, the women's skirts a little longer, and the medicinals a just a little more toxic, but 1909 seems to have been just like any other year in the history of the American magazine.
And I find that comforting.
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