"Due Encouragement": The Consecration of Female Authorship Through Reader Contributions and Extracts in The First Series of The Lady's Magazine (1770–1819)

As Linda Peterson has demonstrated, the British periodical press after the Napoleonic Wars incorporated new authorial identities that aided authors in the development of their careers. Notably, influential women authors seized upon these innovations as an opportunity to gain recognition as legitimate participants in the literary field, what Bourdieu has called "consecration." This article examines a pioneering women's periodical of the preceding period, the Lady's Magazine, arguing that it had already modestly aided in the consecration of female authorship by means of inclusive editorial policies that would become problematic in the early nineteenth century.