Walk into any store or browse online, and you'll spot women's magazines everywhere — they're massively popular. Given that the vast majority of today's women's publications launched within the last 100 years, it would be easy to assume this is a fairly recent cultural invention. The truth, though, is that the concept goes back much further than most people realize.
The very first magazine created specifically for women, The Ladies' Mercury, hit the press on February 27, 1693. Physically, it wasn't much to look at — just a single large sheet of paper with printing on both sides. Yet its content would feel surprisingly familiar to modern readers. Relationship guidance, fashion tips, humor pieces, and an advice column where readers submitted their personal dilemmas all made appearances. That reader-submitted section eventually became known as the "problem page."
The Ladies' Mercury didn't emerge out of thin air — it was actually a spin-off of The Athenian Mercury, an existing publication that catered to a broader readership with coverage of topics like religion, science, and marriage. That earlier magazine featured a question and answer column, and its publisher, John Dunton, began to notice a pattern: many of the questions submitted by female readers clustered around the same subjects. This observation inspired him to create a dedicated women's edition of his magazine, carrying over the beloved advice column from the original publication.
Despite lasting only four weeks in print, The Ladies' Mercury left an outsized mark on publishing history. Its appearance quickly inspired other publishers to launch their own women's-focused magazines, kicking off a tradition that remains alive and thriving to this day.