Woman's Day

History

A&P began publishing the U.S. edition as a free in-store menu/recipe planner, calculated to make customers buy more by giving them meal ideas in an easy-to-read format available inside A&P grocery stores.

Following the 1936 opening of A&P's first modern supermarket (in Braddock, Pennsylvania), A&P expanded Woman's Day in 1937 through a wholly owned subsidiary, the Stores Publishing Company. Selling for five cents a copy (¢ today), the magazine featured articles on childcare, crafts, food preparation and cooking, home decoration, needlework and health, plus a revival of cartoonist Walter Hoban's Jerry on the Job comic strip in a 1939 Grape-Nuts ad campaign.

Sold exclusively in A&P stores, Woman's Day had a circulation of 3,000,000 by 1944. This had reached 4,000,000 by the time A&P sold the magazine to Fawcett Publications in 1958. By 1965, Woman's Day had climbed to a circulation of 6,500,000.

In a mid-1960s appeal to Madison Avenue, an ad for Woman's Day showed a friendly pharmacist named I.A. Morse next to copy that claimed:

Fawcett was sold to CBS in 1977, and CBS, in turn, sold its magazine division to a group led by division head Peter Diamandis, who renamed the group Diamandis Communications. In 1988 Woman's Day, along with the rest of Diamandis, was acquired by Hachette Filipacchi Médias which published the magazine from offices at 1633 Broadway in New York. Hearst Magazines bought the Hachette magazines in the US in 2011. Under Hearst ownership, the magazine switched to bimonthly frequency.

Editors

• Mabel Hill Souvaine (1943–1957)
• Eileen Tighe (1957–1966)
• Geraldine Rhoads (1966–1982)
• Ellen Levine (1982–1991)
• Jane Chesnutt (1991–2010)
• Elizabeth Mayhew (2010-2012)
• Susan Spencer (2012–2020)
• Meaghan Murphy (2020–present)

Notable staff

• Jeanne Voltz

References

References

1. (March 7, 2025). "Top 50 magazines in the US: The Atlantic is fastest growing title in second half of 2024". [Press Gazette].
2. "Top 100 U.S. Magazines by Circulation". PSA Research Center.
3. "Gallery".
4. (2002-01-16). "Jeanne Voltz, 81; Past Editor of Times' Food Section".
5. "Jeanne Appleton Voltz 1920-2002".
6. Voss, Kimberly Wilmot. (April 2013). "Food Journalism or Culinary Anthropology? Re-evaluating Soft News and the Influence of Jeanne Voltz's Food Section in the Los Angeles Times". [[American Journalism]].