PSR 2. Week 6.

 The Australian Woman’s Mirror, 21 January 1930.

by Sarah Burke

Circulation

     The Australian Woman’s Mirror began in 1924 as a weekly.  Printed by The Bulletin, it was created to serve the large amount of feminine content that was being received by their offices.  The magazine stayed in print until 1961, and during this time its readership was maintained by women in both bush and city, resulting in over 160,000 copies being issued in the 1930s alone. The magazine was available by subscription only, however, its postage rates were charged as if it was a newspaper. It is not certain if this allowed the readership a reduced expense, but it was being mailed overseas via all ship routes available to Australia at that time of print.

 Vol. 6, No. 9, released on January 21, 1930, had a cover price of 3^D or a Threepence, or $0.02 or $1.05 in current money.

Fig. 1.  Front cover of The Australian Woman’s Mirror, 21 January 1930.

Editors

    I was unable to source who an editor was, but Cathy Perkins writes in her 2017 online Meanjin article Nothing Wasted:

 ”Having started out as the Bulletin’s little sister, it was so popular by 1960 that Frank Packer bought it in order to kill it and clear the market for his Australian Women’s Weekly.” 

Implied Reader

       The readership for this magazine is the every-woman.  The magazines leave almost no stone turned as it allows for women in all categories to have a page dedicated to them. From small children who have three pages, to the advertising for the ‘superfluous,’ the articles assume that the magazine will be passed around by female family members regardless of age or their location. As can be seen in reader contributed content, contributing from places such as Sarina in Central Queensland to New Zealand.  Published reader content was paid for. The cost of the magazine was very realistic for its time, considering the wide range in content it offered.

Fig. 2. Page 22, Women in the World, The Australian Woman’s Mirror, 21 January 1930.

Content

        Having a contents page allows the magazine to be laid out in an accessible format.   The magazines have fiction, fashion, recipes, help pages, letters to each other, book reviews and advertisements. Readers were encouraged to answer each others requests, and were also paid for their contribution.  This made the magazine a consumer produced piece of technology that globalised often remote readers. Missing are stories and advertisements on travel, art reviews or social pages of famous people. What is substituted in its place as seen in Fig. 2, is a page which introduces various women who have succeeded in their choice of pursuit such as becoming a lawyer, dental assistant for the army, an economic adviser for a university, and even an author on media strategies.  This makes this article quite modern and progressive compared to some other media of its time.

Format

          From cover to back page this issue had 64 pages.  The only colour was on the front, a pale washed blue that was in keeping with its weekly theme of block colours overlaid on an image of a single female posing the latest fashion.  The remainder of the magazine is printed in black or white images or drawings, and the print stays within three font styles that change only in size or italics.  Advertisements may be printed in alternative font, but this may be due to the budget they personally engage for their marketing.  Advertisements are not placed in margins around editorials, but more often grouped together on whole pages.  Readers are given the option to find their favoured articles by use of a contents list at the beginning of the magazine.

List of Figures.

Fig. 1. Front cover of The Australian Woman’s Mirror, 21 January 1930. Trove https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-403182887/view?partId=nla.obj-403619282#page/n0/mode/1up.

 Fig. 2. Page 22, Women of the World, 21 January 1930. Trove https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-403182887/view?partId=nla.obj-403619282#page/n0/mode/1up.

Works Cited

"Pre-Decimal Inflation Counter." Reserve Bank of Australia, 2020. https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html

Perkins, Cathy. “Nothing is Wasted.” Meanjin, 2017, https://meanjin.com.au/essays/nothing-is-wasted/.   Accessed 4 September 2020.

"The Australian Woman’s Mirror (1924-61)." State Library New South Wales, 2017. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/blogs/australian-womans-mirror-now-online. 

" The Australian Woman’s Mirror (1930)." Trove, 2020.  https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-403182887/view?partId=nla.obj-403629600#page/n21/mode/1up.