Tag Archives: women editors

Beatrice Ironside

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The January 31, 1807 issue of the Observer–the one that carried Benjamin Bickerstaff’s resignation and the riposte of the editor, Eliza Anderson–was also the first one to introduce the name “Beatrice Ironside.” Like Benjamin Bickerstaff, this was a pseudonym–in this case, a pseudonym for Anderson herself. But in the January 31 issue, it appeared only as a name under the masthead, which for the first time carried the words “by Beatrice Ironside.”

It wasn’t until the following week that the pseudonym appeared in the body of the magazine, under an editorial note addressed to “Readers and Correspondents” (who were, in many cases, one and the same). In a way, this is Anderson coming out of the closet, so to speak: it’s both a description of the magazine and an invitation to prospective contributors, something that you might expect to find in a magazine’s first issue or prospectus. The fact that this editorial didn’t appear until after Bickerstaff went off in a huff leads me to suspect that, although Anderson was referred to as editor while he was still there, he was actually exerting quite a bit of editorial control. In any event, the rift between the two was decidedly bitter, judging from some editorial jousting later in the year.

In the note, “Ironside” catalogued the subjects the Observer would touch on–and a pretty exhaustive catalogue it is: the fine arts, history, poetry, fiction, even politics (although “Ironside” says that she herself “has never so much attended to the subject of politics as to entitle her to an opinion,” and makes it clear that the publication will be nonpartisan). In this eclecticism, the Observer was similar to other “literary miscellanies” of the day.

And like its contemporary periodicals, the Observer relied on submissions from unpaid contributors, many of which apparently came in over the transom. Aside from Bickerstaff, who had now departed, Anderson appears to have been the only writer on staff, as it were. In her note to readers and contributors, Anderson thanked some of those who had sent in articles and poems and encouraged them to write more. (This included a writer she names as “Judith O’Donnelly,” but then refers to as “he”–an indication, perhaps, that she knew the pseudonym was being used by a man.) Other contributors, however, were actively discouraged, including one who had sent “two or three pages that must be the production of some moon-struck brain … We beg this gentleman henceforth to address us only in his lucid intervals.”

One problem was that contributors were sending their submissions with postage due–so that Anderson had to pay for the privilege of reading these offerings, some of which “immediately found their way from our fingers to the fire.” This was, as she put it, very expensive fuel, and she announced that henceforth all submissions must arrive with their postage paid.

It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, though, that Anderson, in the guise of Beatrice Ironside, would undertake the task of satisfying public curiosity about, as she put it, “what manner of woman our female editor may be”–and explaining the derivation of her pseudonym.

"The Lucubrations of Benjamin Bickerstaff"

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It was a pretty extraordinary thing for a woman to found and edit a magazine in 1807. Hence, I suppose, the subterfuge masking the true sex of the editor of the Observer in its very early days. Benjamin Latrobe, who clearly knew he was writing for the magazine edited by “Mrs. Anderson,” nevertheless addressed the editor as “my dear Sir.” And a columnist known to us by the pseudonym “Benjamin Bickerstaff”–an allusion to “Isaac Bickerstaff,” a pseudonym used by the writer Richard Steele in the 18th-century publication The Tatler–referred to his “friend” the editor as “he.”

But it was a dispute with this very Bickerstaff that soon led to the surprisingly casual revelation that the editor was not a “he” but a “she”–perhaps the first “she” to edit a magazine in the United States. In what was only his second or third column–headed “The Lucubrations of Benjamin Bickerstaff”–Bickerstaff undertook to praise the females of Baltimore. The following week, under the same heading, there appeared an article that was clearly not written by Bickerstaff. It was signed “Tabitha Simple,” and it purported to be a letter that took issue with some of Bickerstaff’s praise. While Simple declared herself charmed by Bickerstaff’s admiration for Baltimore girls, she suggested that they were just a tad affected. To prove her point, she zeroed in on “a lovely creature” she had seen “the other evening at the assembly,” who had been so intent on “displaying the perfect symmetry of her form” that she had “writhed her person about like an eel in the ruthless grip of a cook.”

The following week’s issue carried an indignant response from Bickerstaff–who said that the Tabitha Simple letter had been printed, under his “byline,” as it were, without any advance notice to him. (The editor admitted as much, but implied that the situation was desperate because Bickerstaff was late with his copy.) Apparently a number of young women in Baltimore had concluded that Tabitha Simple’s criticism was directed at them, and the gallant Bickerstaff sprang to the defense of them all. He even went so far as to argue that Tabitha Simple could not really be a woman, because “no woman could have written such a letter.”

In the course of defending the female population of Baltimore against this perceived attack, Bickerstaff–perhaps inadvertently–revealed that the editor of the Observer was in fact a member of that very population. “The subject of this lucubration,” he wrote, “may probably be unpleasant to the editor of this miscellany, but I am compelled to declare, that I have suffered more pain than she can possibly experience.” (I added the italics.)

So pained was he, in fact, that he declared that “nothing shall hereafter, appear in the Observer, EITHER FROM THE PEN OR UNDER THE NAME OF BENJAMIN BICKERSTAFF.” (The italics–and the capital letters–are in the original.)

Which suddenly left our editor not only unmasked, at least in terms of her gender, but without her star writer … What was she to do?

 

 

Above all, the friend of truth

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So how did Baltimore react to this news of a female editor in 1806, at a time when such a thing was generally unheard of?

Initially, at least–as far as can be determined–there wasn’t much of a reaction at all. But in the same editorial quoted in the previous post, the new female editor (later female editors would embrace the term “editress,” but this one didn’t) announced that there would soon be “alterations” in the “plan” of the Companion–alterations that were to include more assistance for the overworked editor. And, as it turned out, these alterations also entailed scrapping the Companion altogether and founding a new publication, to be called the Observer. The last issue of the Companion appeared at the end of October, and a prospectus for the Observer appeared towards the end of November. Although the first few issues of the Observer are either obscure or misleading about the editor’s sex (the editor is sometimes referred to as “he”), it was soon revealed to be female–and,not surprisingly, to be the same female who had previously been editing the Companion.

Why start a new magazine? Apparently because the new editor wanted to inject more satire into the magazine than the philanthropist who had backed the Companion was willing to tolerate (at least, that’s the explanation that appears later on). This new magazine was to be not only more satirical but, at times, downright acerbic, skewering various denizens of Baltimore who were thought to be wanting in culture or refinement. The change in tone was reflected in both the name change (from the Companion to the Observer)and the change in motto (from “A safe companion and an easy friend” to “The friend of Socrates, the friend of Plato, but above all, the friend of truth”).

But here’s the real question, at least for our purposes: who was this new female editor? Given the early 19th-century penchant for anonymity and pseudonyms, her real name appears nowhere in either publication (the pseudonym she eventually settled on was “Beatrice Ironside”). As anyone who has read previous postings of this blog might know, I have identified her as 26-year-old Eliza Anderson–the daughter of a Baltimore doctor, the abandoned wife of a ne’er-do-well merchant, and the mother of a now six-year-old girl–and the friend of a local celebrity, Betsy Patterson Bonaparte.

How do I know Eliza was the editor? The first clue comes from an early contributor to the Observer: Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the first professional architect in the United States, who oversaw the design and construction of the U.S. Capitol. (There was a terrific documentary about his life on PBS not long ago.) On October 28, 1806–just after the last issue of the Companion had appeared, and shortly before the Prospectus for the Observer would appear–Latrobe wrote a note on the flyleaf of a journal he kept: “’No. 1. Ideas on the encouragement of the Fine Arts in America’ written at the instance of some friends in Baltimore for the paper edited by Mrs. Anderson.” The essay that follows in Latrobe’s journal corresponds exactly to an article that appeared in the Prospectus, signed “B.” (A second installment appeared in the Observer’s first issue.)

Conceivably there could have been some other “Mrs. Anderson” editing a magazine in Baltimore in 1806, but this seems unlikely. Especially when you add to Latrobe’s note the evidence that was to come a year later in the form of impassioned denunciations of “Mrs. E.A., the fierce fury who edits the Observer,” in Baltimore’s newspaper.

But we’re getting ahead of our story…

A Safe Companion and an Easy Friend

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So, what of this early 19th-century magazine, the Companion? This much we know: It was founded in Baltimore towards the end of 1804 and continued to publish until October 1806–a fairly long run for a “literary miscellany” of the time (the Companion‘s full title was The Companion and Weekly Miscellany). Apparently these journals would often spring up and then vanish a few weeks or months later.

In 1811 another Baltimore publication attested to the genre’s generally short lifespan: “In the City of Baltimore so many abortive attempts have been made to establish a Literary Miscellany, that Experiment and Disappointment have become synonymous terms.” The author even mentioned the Companion by name, despite its relative success: “The weekly visits of the Companion were scarcely greeted by a civil salutation,” the author lamented. (This was part of a series of puns on the names of various defunct publications: “the rays of Moonshine were speedily extinguished: no one could see through the Spectacles,” etc.)

Just as 18th- and 19th-century newspapers bear little resemblance to what we now call a newspaper (their front pages were usually entirely taken up with ads, they freely mingled opinion and reportage, and their “news” was often weeks old), these magazines were rather different from their modern counterparts. For one thing, the “profession” of journalism hadn’t really been invented yet. The editors and contributors were all unpaid amateurs, often pressed for time–which may explain the brief life of many of the publications. Many of the writers in a given city actually knew one another–which enabled them to see past the pseudonyms, a convention originally adopted because a gentleman wasn’t supposed to be engaging in this sort of activity. A typical issue might include a column or two, often written in a humorous vein, an essay on a historical or philosophical topic, a poem, a review of a concert or an art exhibit, and perhaps a smattering of stale news from Europe. And the pages of these magazines reveal a number of lively ongoing dialogues: one issue might well contain a vigorous response to an article published in the same magazine the week before, or to something that had appeared in another local publication.

In some ways, though, these magazines seem strikingly modern. Think about it: a community of individuals, many of them more or less protected by pseudonyms, often engaging in heated written argument in a public venue–sometimes, indeed, “flaming” each other. Remind you of anything? Yes, the internet. And the give-and-take nature of these publications, with many readers doubling as contributors (or leaving “comments”), is reminiscent of an early version of a blog (not to mention the fact that the writers weren’t actually getting paid–just like most bloggers). Of course, people weren’t only using these magazines to argue with each other. Like the internet, the publications also fostered a sense of community among their readers. (My neighborhood listserv is an amazing example of this. Neighbors who may never have actually spoken to each other are constantly trading household tips, finding each others’ lost pets, and arranging to shovel sidewalks for the elderly.)

It’s hard to say who the first editors of the Companion were. The pseudonyms they used–Edward Easy, Nathan Scruple, etc.–generally obscured even more than their real names: they came with entire fictional personae. “Edward Easy,” for example, was supposed to be an elderly Quaker gentleman from Pennsylvania, with a backstory too complicated to go into here. But it’s clear from later issues of the Companion (whose motto was “A safe companion and an easy friend”) that those who were involved were all fairly young. In one issue, after the magazine had gone through several editors and suffered some publication difficulties, the editor of the moment pleads with readers to attribute any mistakes to the editors’ “youth and inexperience.”

My best guess is that the founders were a group of young men who were students at, or possibly recent graduates of, St. Mary’s College, an institution founded by French Catholic priests in Baltimore in 1791. (It still exists as a seminary–and in the 20th century produced the famously anti-war Berrigan brothers–but in its early days it provided a secular education as well.) Similar “circles” of young men in other cities sometimes produced publications as an outgrowth of their discussions of books, philosophy, and current events.

There may have been a few women involved as contributors–some of the articles carry female pseudonyms like “Flavia” and “Biddy Fidget.” But when an editor is referred to, the pronoun is always “he.”

Until the issue of October 4, 1806, that is. That issue carries an editorial ringing the familiar theme of apology for a dearth of lively material. Note, however, the pronouns used:

 

… But when it is considered that the entire arrangement of the Companion depends on one alone, and whether the editor is grave or gay, whether visions of hope and pleasure play before her imagination, or she is sunk into despondence and beset with a whole legion of blue devils, the printer, like her evil genius, still pursues her at the stated period, and the selections must be made, and the proofs corrected, and of consequence, “The Safe Companion and Easy Friend,” must sometimes as well as safe and easy be sad and soporific …

Yes: not “him” and “he,” but “her” and “she.” Thus it was announced, without any particular fanfare, that the new (or perhaps not so new) editor of the Companion was a woman–quite possibly the first woman to edit a magazine in the United States.

How would Baltimore react to this anomaly?

"From a Learned Wife, Ye Gods Deliver Me"

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As I sit here anticipating a winter storm–the second in a week–that may knock out power, I feel a particular kinship with the people of the early 19th century who I’m writing about here. Imagine a world with no electricity, no internet, no central heating, no cable TV … Sounds a lot like the world they inhabited. At least we’ll still have indoor plumbing. And even if I’m reduced to writing with a pen, I won’t have to use a quill (I tried that once and don’t recommend it).

But now, to Eliza. What became of her after she accompanied Betsy Bonaparte on her voyage across the Atlantic? The first year or so after her arrival back in Baltimore, in November 1805, isn’t well documented. In 1802 her father mentioned in a letter that she had taken up teaching school–presumably teaching girls, since boys were generally instructed by men–but we have no information on where she might have done that, or how long the job lasted.

But by October, or perhaps earlier, of 1806, she had taken up a new line of work, albeit an unpaid one: she had become the editor of a magazine.

Now, let us pause for a moment to consider how extraordinary it was for a woman–and a woman of only 26 years of age–to do such a thing in 1806. Although during the Revolution and its immediate aftermath there had been some talk of women’s rights in the United States–including Abigail Adams’s oft-quoted plea to her husband to “remember the ladies”–it didn’t lead to much in the way of actual rights. Women today complain of glass ceilings, lack of pay parity, and having to shoulder most of the housework when they get home from their jobs–as well they should. But when you compare that to the legal disabilities women labored under 200 years ago, and then-prevailing attitudes about their capacities and their rightful place, it becomes clear that women have indeed, as the cigarette ads used to say, come a long way. And not just because they’re now allowed to smoke.

Married women couldn’t make contracts or own property in their own names–which made it impossible for them to operate a business. Single women were spared this disability–and in New Jersey, up until 1807, they were even allowed to vote–but few professions were open to them. And, since marriage was considered to be the be-all and end-all of a woman’s life, an unmarried–or, worse, divorced–woman didn’t fit particularly well into the society of the time. Young women were supposed to get married; after that, they were supposed to devote themselves to their husbands and children (assuming they didn’t die in childbirth, as many did).

True, Mary Wollstonecraft had written A Vindication of The Rights of Woman in 1792, but even its modest claims–such as that women should be educated, in part because that would make them better companions for their husbands–were considered pretty far out there. And after Wollstonecraft’s well-meaning widower published a memoir in 1798 that exposed the details of her unconventional life, including the fact that she’d had a child out of wedlock, no one wanted to have anything to do with her ideas.

For a sample of contemporary opinion on women, we need look no further than the very magazine where Eliza Anderson became editor–it was called the Companion–just a few months before she assumed that post. In May 1806, the magazine published an article by an author using the pseudonym “Tibullus.” (Virtually all early 19th-century contributors to magazines used pseudonyms, a convention that served its purposes at the time, but that now makes life exceedingly frustrating for the historian.)

This Tibullus opined,”There exists not an instance on record of one noble discovery being added to human science, through the exertions of a female.” He added that this was a good thing: “Vanity holds so predominant a sway in the breast of woman, and is so prone to distend itself at every increase of knowledge, that science becomes with her a most pernicious acquisition.” Occasionally a women might be able to engage in a few “sprightly flourishes of the mind.” But, he added, “when she attempts the critic and philosopher, nature is outraged; man revolts at a monster so unnatural in the creation, and exclaims with the Roman poet–O sit mihi non doctissima consors.” This last bit is helpfully translated as, “From a learned wife, ye Gods deliver me.”

Now of course, not everyone in 1806 agreed with Tibullus. The following week another correspondent–signing himself “A.B.C.Darian”–weighed in on the issue. But his response also sheds light on what women were actually up against. Maybe it’s true, he says, that women are “just smatterers in learning,” but that’s because of “proud man, who in the plenitude of his power, selfishly restricts them to the arts of dalliance and the charms of pleasing.” It’s not that women are incapable of learning, it’s that they’re prevented from getting any. “What parent,” A.B.C.Darian asks rhetorically, “thinks of giving to a daughter the education of a son?” A little French, maybe some Italian, and instruction in “music, dancing, embroidery or needle work” … such was the extent of most women’s education (and of course we’re talking about the wealthy ones–the poorer ones were lucky to learn how to read and write). Buck up, he says to women, “ye fairest flowers of creation.” Don’t believe those who deny that a woman has a brain, those who “can grant her no other attainment but what conduces to her lustre as a mistress or a slave.”

So how, in these circumstances, did a woman manage to become editor of a magazine–a magazine not devoted just to fashion and food and other “feminine” concerns, but a magazine that included articles on politics and history and criticized the local arts scene? I’m not sure I can actually answer that question, but stay tuned for a description of what happened next.

Exciting(?) News From the Past

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So, faithful readers (“reader”? anyone?) are dying to know: who IS the historically significant, hitherto unknown woman I mentioned in my last post? Actually, really faithful readers will find the revelation to be old news, since I’ve mentioned her before in this space.

Her name was Eliza Anderson — or, to be more complete, Eliza Crawford Anderson Godefroy, and she lived from 1780 to 1839. That she’s unknown is probably self-evident, unless you’re one of the handful of people who know about her. So, why is she historically significant? I think she may well have been the first woman to edit a magazine in the United States.

Perhaps this fact strikes you as something less than earth-shaking, and it surely won’t require the rewriting of high school textbooks. But if you read through secondary source after secondary source, and they all identify someone ELSE as the first female magazine editor — someone, that is, who came later — you can find this tidbit of knowledge pretty exciting. At least, I can!

It’s not just that Eliza was the first, of course. She edited her magazine in a pretty interesting way, and she had a pretty amazing — if ultimately sad — life. I’m currently working on a scholarly article about her, but it’s a safe bet that very few people will ever read it. So I thought I might add, marginally, to the number of people who know about Eliza Anderson by occasionally posting some snippets about her here. If you’re intrigued, please come back for more!