The Pictorial Review was an American women's magazine published from 1899 to 1939.

Pictorial Review
CategoriesWomen's magazine
FrequencyMonthly
First issueSeptember 1899 (1899-September)
Final issueMarch 1939
CompanyPictorial Review Company
CountryUnited States
Based inNew York City
LanguageEnglish

Based in New York, the Pictorial Review was first published in September 1899. The magazine was originally designed to showcase dress patterns of German immigrant William Paul Ahnelt's American Fashion Company. On the title page of Pictorial Review, on each sheet of its letterhead, was a rococo device: a scroll with the numeral "13" and a pencil, surrounded by a wreath. That trademark was adopted by Ahnelt shortly after he founded Pictorial Review. It symbolized the $13 capital with which he started his dress pattern business upon coming to the United States.[1]

The celebrated novel The Age of Innocence (1920), by Edith Wharton, was first published in four episodes in Pictorial Review from July-October 1920 before it appeared as a book on 25 October of that year.[2]

Pictorial Review was published in two languages: English and Spanish. The Spanish edition was printed a million four hundred thousand copies. The director of the Spanish edition was Rómulo Manuel de Mora, from Huelva (Spain).

By the late 1920s it was one of the largest of the "women's magazines".[3] In June, 1931 it enjoyed a circulation of 2,540,000.[1]

In 1936, the publisher sold the magazine to its Vice President, Adman George S. Fowler.[1] In 1937 it merged with The Delineator, another women's magazine. However, two years later, with the Great Depression causing upheaval among magazines, it ceased publication.[4][5] From 1935 to 1939, activist and feminist Lena Madesin Phillips served as an associate editor.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Magazine Sold". Time. January 11, 1932. Archived from the original on October 27, 2010. Retrieved July 14, 2007.
  2. ^ "Writing The Age of Innocence: Selling Innocence", The Mount; Edith Wharton's Home [1]
  3. ^ Kathleen Endres (1995). Women's Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-28631-0. Retrieved July 14, 2007.
  4. ^ Pictorial Review, MagazineArt.org, Retrieved July 14, 2007
  5. ^ "Pictorial Sold". Time. January 11, 1932.
  6. ^ "Lena Madesin Phillips". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
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