Average:

0

No votes yet

Your rating: Select ratingCancel ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Cosmopolitan is the best-selling[citation needed] young women's magazine in the world. The content includes articles on relationships and sex, health, careers, self-improvement[citation needed], celebrities, as well as fashion and beauty [1]. Published by Hearst Magazines, Cosmopolitan has 58 international editions, is printed in 34 languages and is distributed in more than 100 countries

History

Cosmopolitan began as a family magazine, launched in 1886 by Schlicht & Field as The Cosmopolitan.

Paul Schlicht told his first-issue readers that his publication was a "first-class family magazine", adding, "There will be a department devoted exclusively to the interests of women, with articles on fashions, on household decoration, on cooking, and the care and management of children, etc., also a department for the younger members of the family."

Cosmopolitan's circulation reached 25,000 that year, but by March, 1888, Schlicht & Field were no longer in business. John Brisben Walker acquired the magazine in 1889, and E. D. Walker, formerly with Harper's Monthly, took over as the new editor, introducing color illustrations, serials and book reviews. It became a leading market for fiction, featuring such authors as Annie Besant, Ambrose Bierce, Theodore Dreiser, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Willa Cather and Edith Wharton. The magazine's circulation climbed to 75,000 by 1892.

In 1897 Cosmopolitan announced plans for a free correspondence school: "No charge of any kind will be made to the student. All expenses for the present will be borne by the Cosmopolitan. No conditions, except a pledge of a given number of hours of study." When 20,000 immediately signed up, Walker could not fund the school and students were then asked to contribute 20 dollars a year. Also in 1897, H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds was serialized, as was his The First Men in the Moon (1900). Olive Schreiner contributed a lengthy article about the Boer War.

In 1905 William Randolph Hearst purchased the magazine for $400,000 (approximately $11,000,000 in 2007 prices) and brought in journalist Charles Edward Russell, who contributed a series of investigative articles, including "The Growth of Caste in America" (March, 1907), "At the Throat of the Republic" (December, 1907 - March, 1908) and "What Are You Going to Do About It?" (July, 1910 - January, 1911) and "Colorado - New Tricks in an Old Game" (December 1910).

Other contributors during this period included Alfred Henry Lewis, Sinclair Lewis, A. J. Cronin, David Graham Phillips, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell. Illustrators included Francis Attwood, Dean Cornwell, James Montgomery Flagg and Harrison Fisher.



March 1894 issue





With a circulation of 1,700,000 in the 1930s, Cosmopolitan had an advertising income of $5,000,000. Emphasizing fiction in the 1940s, it was subtitled The Four-Book Magazine since the first section had one novelette, six or eight short stories, two serials, six to eight articles and eight or nine special features, while the other three sections featured two novels and a digest of current non-fiction books. During World War II, sales peaked at 2,000,000.

The magazine began to run less fiction during the 1950s. Circulation dropped to slightly over a million by 1955, a time when magazines were overshadowed during the rise of paperbacks and television. The Golden Age of magazines came to an end as consumer magazine|mass market, general interest publications gave way to special interest magazines targeting specialized audiences.



[edit] Helen Gurley Brown arrives

Cosmopolitan's circulation continued to decline for another decade until Helen Gurley Brown became chief editor in 1965 and remodeled the magazine as New Cosmopolitan. The magazine was renamed back to Cosmopolitan in 1967. In the early 1970s, Cosmopolitan became a women's magazine complete with a sexy cover shot every month of a woman (usually) in a low cut dress or bikini. Brown wished to show the "single woman" that she was not alone in engaging in pre-marital sex; there were other women throughout the country who were doing the same thing.

In Brown's early years as editor, the magazine received a lot of criticism. Many people were shocked at the new message of the one-time literary magazine. Brown, however, took no notice and continued to print the magazine that she had envisioned.

The magazine ran a near-nude centerfold of then little-known actor Burt Reynolds in April 1972. It was a scandalous move for the time. The issue created great controversy, propelling both Cosmopolitan and Reynolds to the forefront of American popular culture.

In April 1978, a single edition of Cosmopolitan Man was published as a trial, targeted to appeal to men. Its cover featured Jack Nicholson and Aurore Clément. It was published twice in 1989 as a supplement to Cosmopolitan.[3]