The Lily

The Lily was the first U.S. newspaper edited by and for women. It was published from 1849 to 1853 by Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–1894), before she sold the newspaper to Mary Birdsall in 1854. While the newspaper initially focused on temperance, it soon broadened its focus to include the many issues of women’s rights activists in the 1850s. It grew in its distribution as a result of its discussion of bloomers, a comfortable fashion popularized by Bloomer in the paper. In 1848, The Lily developed as a publication for "home distribution" among the women who belonged to the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society in response to their feeling marginalized by the larger temperance movement. Enthusiasm for the project quickly faded, however. Amelia Bloomer didn't want to see the paper die, and so she took on responsibility for editing and publishing the paper. Bloomer's initial interest was not in women's rights but in temperance, and this topic featured prominently in its early issues, even after the paper detached from the Temperance Society. Bloomer believed that women writing in pursuit of reform was less unseemly than giving speeches or lectures. The first issues were priced at 50 cents a year and published in Seneca Falls, New York as a monthly, eight-page, three-column publication. The inaugural issue, published on January 1, 1849, set forth the philosophy and initial goals: "It is WOMAN that speaks through the LILY. It is upon an important subject, too, that she comes before the public to be heard. Intemperance is the great foe to her peace and happiness."Bloomer wrote, "The Lily was the first paper devoted to the interests of woman and, so far as I know, the first one owned, edited and published by a woman." Initially, the title page celebrated this by announcing that it was "Published by a committee of ladies," but after 1850, the masthead featured Bloomer's name alone. Far from radical, the initial publication focused on issues of temperance, showing women as "defenders of the home." In the first issue, Bloomer wrote: It is woman that speaks through The Lily…Intemperance is the great foe to her peace and happiness. It is that above all that has made her Home desolate and beggared her offspring…. Surely, she has the right to wield her pen for its Suppression. Surely, she may without throwing aside the modest refinements which so much become her sex, use her influence to lead her fellow mortals from the destroyer’s path.