My first post was July 12, 2018. I thought this would be the perfect date to share a milestone I’ve been working on ever since. I have finally completed my wartime Woman’s Day collection with the addition of the January 1944 issue.
I decided to collect all of the issues from January 1940 to December 1945. I do have some from the late 1930s and the later 1940s ,and even some earlier and later than that, but my goal was every issue from 1940 to 1945.
While researching homefront propaganda during WWII, I found that Woman’s Day readers and the women I was writing about were one and the same. Of course, there are other magazines from the time that I am slowly collecting as well. Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, The American Home, and many others are full of great material. I have just always been drawn to Woman’s Day and have found the articles and information within its pages to be extremely useful.
I enjoy pulling out one of these issues and imagining what someone in 1941 or 1943 would have been thinking. What would her life have been like? What concerns and fears and joys would she have? Honestly, women in 1944 had a lot in common with women in 2024, and while the modern issues of Woman’s Day are shinier–or maybe even digital!–the topics inside are still very similar. Finding recipes to feed our families, discovering the best ways to decorate and care for our homes, and learning about women’s health issues fill the pages of both modern and vintage issues.
I thought I’d share an article out of the issue that completed this collection with you. This is the first time that I have seen a chart like this and I found it fascinating. I hope you do, too. I’ll upload larger versions of each page at the end of this post.
Am I finished collecting Woman’s Day? Definitely not, but I think I will focus more on another magazine for now. I just haven’t decided which one. I’ll let you know in the future.
Have a great weekend!
Larger versions of each page:
History in the Kitchen 