New periodical targets female readers

The Female Spectator was the first magazine that was written for women by a woman

The magazine was founded by Eliza Haywood, who was born in Shropshire c1693. Haywood had been an actor before becoming a writer of plays, poems, translations, political tracts and novels.

Most of the articles in The Female Spectator focused on love and marriage. However, science and the natural world as revealed through microscopes were also covered. The contributors were characters of Haywood’s own imagination: the female spectator of the title; a beautiful unmarried heiress; a happily married woman; and a ‘widow of quality’. Anecdotes emphasised the need for women to be educated, and to refrain from immoral behaviour. Haywood published 24 issues in total.