What is The Delineator Magazine

In Which We Venture to Contradict Virgil

"EVER changeable," sang the Roman poet, "is a woman." If Virgil were to return from Elysium and took the job of editing a woman's magazine —he would quickly change, we think, his tune.

For a woman's nature is a rock upon which the home is built.

You can, if you will, direct your editorial aim to a particular superficial, iridescent froth that at some time or other sparkles, bubbles, and disappears upon the surface of most women's lives. But if you do, you will never reach that woman whose fundamental nature is unchanging as the rock of ages.

We have tried to make The Delineator in the truest sense a woman's magazine. Evanescent fads and follies have no place between their covers. But nothing that interests the real woman is alien to its pages.

THE DELINEATOR is much more than a fiction magazine. But because women like good fiction, The Delineator is often the first to publish stories that later become famous as best-sellers in book form. For example:—

Mrs. Meloney, the editor of The Delineator, went to England to talk with Hutchinson, Galsworthy, and other English authors who write fiction for The Delineator. Mr. Hutchinson told her that he had wanted to write a story about the woman in business for years. He did not believe a woman could be fair to her children and succeed in business. Mrs. Meloney argued for the woman who does not choose [a career] but must make a living for herself and her children.

Four days they talked—and finally, Mr. Hutchinson said:—

"I'm going to write the story about a family in England I know—and I'm going to write the truth about them."

"This Freedom" was the result.

The critics, divided between enthusiastic praise and savage censure, do not seem to agree about "This Freedom" as a piece of literature. But one thing is sure. Everyone is now reading and talking about this remarkable story that first appeared in The Delineator. Ten days after "This Freedom" was published as a book; its sales had exceeded by 55,000 copies the total sales of "If Winter Comes" ten weeks after publication.

DELINEATOR readers benefit in many ways from the friendly, intimate contact with authors, which is characteristic of The Delineator's editorial policy. Not long ago, Kathleen Norris came across the continent from California to discuss with The Delineator her next story, "The Secret of Margaret Yorke." And Zona Gale wrote of a change The Delineator suggested in one of her stories: "I feel as though you had made me a present. The story is so much better!"

If space permitted, we could tell fascinating stories of many other authors who write fiction for The Delineator: Edith Wharton, Joseph Lincoln, George Barr McCutcheon, Josephine Daskam Bacon, Ernest Thompson Seton, Perceval Gibbon, Fanny Heaslip Lea, Grace Sartwell Mason, and many others.

Yet, we reiterate that The Delineator is not a fiction magazine. Good fiction and plenty of it is an essential part of The Delineator because a woman's mind is incurably romantic and loves, above all things, a good story.

The Delineator is more than a fiction magazine. It is a woman's magazine—the real woman who has not changed since Virgil's day, the woman who was Mother Eve before Rome rose or Virgil sang.

-- The Printer's Ink, November 1922

THE DELINEATOR Is the Largest, Most Representative, and thoroughly up-to-date of all the women's magazines published.

The recently introduced Colored Plates of Fashions and Millinery are of immense value to all interested in the fashionable and correct dress. In the other, numerous illustrations show all the prevailing styles are accurately pictured.

The earliest reliable information is given concerning these incoming Fashions, Millinery, and Materials. Lovers of Fancy Work will find a wider variety of novel designs than in many periodicals devoted solely to the purpose.

In general reading, there is a wide range of topics touching on nearly everything of interest to women: Cookery, the Care of Children, Household Duties and Appointments, Beauty and Hygiene, Etiquette, Education, Employments and Professions, Handcrafts and Occupations, Entertainments, etc., etc., with a short story each month by a distinguished novelist.

There is a large staff of well-known writers, and among the notable contributors are:

Edith M. Thomas, Mary Cadwalader Jones, Isabel Hapgood, Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff, Agnes Repplier, Viola Allen, Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Emma Haywood, Alice Meynell, Ellen Olney Kirk, Anne H. Wharton, Julia Magruder, Helen Choate Prince, Francis Lynde, Frances Courtenay Baylor, Octave Thanet, Molly Elliott Seawell, Lady Jeune, Alice Morse Earle, Christian Reid, and Dr. Grace Peckham Murray.

Brilliant additions to this list are continually being made.

-- The Delineator, May 1898

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