The Girl’s Own Paper, founded in 1880, both shaped and reflected tensions between traditional domestic ideologies of the period and New Woman values in the context of the figure of the New Girl. These selections from the journal demonstrate the efforts of its publisher (the Religious Tract Society) to combat the negative moral influence of sensational popular literature while at the same time addressing the desires of its audience for exciting reading material and information about topics mothers could not or would not discuss.

Selected fiction gives a rich sense of the conventions and the domestic ideology of the time; the nonfiction prose ranges from essays on conduct and household management to articles on new opportunities in education and work.

Terri Doughty's profile page

Terri Doughty is a Professor at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo, British Columbia. She has published on New Woman fiction as well as on gender issues in children’s literature.

"Overall, Selections from The Girl's Own Paper constitutes a significant contribution to periodical research and will benefit scholars engaged in research concerning the New Woman or those examining issues of gender in the late Victorian era. In addition, the use of facsimile pages will be helpful to those interested in the graphic visual culture of the period."

Victorian Periodicals Review