Ella Hepworth Dixon and Editorship

Abstract

Ella Hepworth Dixon took on the editorship of the monthly magazine the Englishwoman between March and August 1895 at an exciting moment in the history of women's involvement in the periodical press. This essay seeks to shed as much light as possible on Dixon's editorship, seeing the choices she makes about contributors, content and style as fundamentally influenced by her wide-reaching understanding of female roles at the fin de siècle. Throughout her life, both before and after working on the Englishwoman, Dixon was interested in editorship: the methods by which editors worked, the relationships forged with their contributors and the ways in which the editorial role might adapt to changes in publishing conditions. Thinking carefully about editorship—in her magazine and in her fiction—also entailed considering the varying expectations held about women's roles in the periodical press. The six months of Dixon's editorship of the Englishwoman gives us a window into late-century female journalistic endeavour that differs markedly from the narrative of drudgery lacking editorial opportunity or authorial autonomy which she had provided in The Story of a Modern Woman the year before.

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