Our sister editors

Patricia Okker

Our Sister Editors is the first book-length study of Sarah J. Hale's editorial career. From 1828 to 1836 Hale edited the Boston-based Ladies' Magazine and then from 1837 to 1877 Philadelphia's Godey's Lady's Book, which on the eve of the Civil War was the most widely read periodical in the United States, boasting more than 150,000 subscribers. Hale reviewed thousands of books, regularly contributed her own fiction and poetry to her magazines, wrote monthly editorials, and published the work of such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Lydia Sigourney. Our Sister Editors provides the first overview of the large and diverse group of nineteenth-century women editors. Examining "the explosive nature of the public women's space they created and maintained," Okker gauges the extent to which these editors resisted narrow definitions of domesticity. An appendix highlights the contributions of more than six hundred women editors during this period.