Society of Women Journalists 1894-1914

The Society of Women Journalists (SWJ) was formed in the spring of 1894 by J. S. Wood, editor and publisher of The Gentlewoman. Founded at a time when most press clubs and organizations either excluded women or admitted them only grudgingly, the SWJ offered considerable benefits to members. The organization provided access to medical care, a solicitor to help negotiate contracts, a fund for members in financial straits, and numerous networking opportunities through its regular teas, president’s receptions, and lecture series.

The women who joined the Society in its early years were editors and contributors, writers and artists, staff members and free-lancers. Their contributions to the press reflect the diversity of and within periodicals at the turn of the twentieth century. Members wrote about stereotypically feminine subjects, such as home management, cookery, decorating, children, and fashion. But they also wrote art, theatre, and music criticism; book reviews; serial and short fiction; and articles about gardening, science, sports (golf and hockey in particular), travel, and social and political subjects. Many contributed in multiple genres as well, often making a career of feature-, review-, and fiction-writing.

Members contributed to London and provincial daily newspapers, weekly and monthly periodicals, and quarterly reviews. They published in women’s and girls’ magazines, family magazines, and religious periodicals as well as temperance, automobile, sport, and other specialist magazines. They also contributed to the American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and South African press, as well as English-language newspapers in China, India, and Thailand. The SWJ’s membership, though centered in the UK, was transnational from the start. Members lived in the U.S., Europe, the Commonwealth, as well as Egypt and China.

In 1951, the organization changed its name to the Society of Women Writers and Journalists to reflect its expanding scope. It continues to support women writers today.

About this Project

This site is a research database of membership in the Society of Women Journalists between 1894 and 1914. It is a searchable, free online resource that currently offers the ability to:

• Search by member name, penname, and position


• Stay tuned for other search functionalities!

This project was created in order to:

• Recover the identities of women working as journalists at the turn of the twentieth century


• Map networks of social and professional support among female journalists


• Recover a more detailed history of the early years of the SWJ


• Centralize and make more widely accessible SWJ membership lists.

Membership lists come from SWJ Annual Reports published between 1898 and 1915. Incomplete runs of the Annual Reports can be found at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the Toronto Public Library. I have not been able to locate Annual Reports for the first four years of the organization’s existence or for its twentieth year, 1913-1914. I draw on reports about SWJ activities in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century periodicals to reconstitute membership lists for these years. Biographical information about members comes from a number of sources, including Ancestry, At the Circulating Library, British Periodicals, C19: The Nineteenth Century Index, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wikipedia, and the SWJ's own periodical, The Woman Journalist.

The database and website were created by a team of faculty and students at the University of Dayton. The project facilitates student and faculty research on women writers from the turn of the twentieth century and on web development.

Acknowledgements

This project has been funded by a Liberal Arts Scholarship Catalyst Grant (2021) and Dean’s Summer Fellowships (2021, 2024) awarded by the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Dayton. A special thank you to Dr. Phu Phung and Dr. Nick Stiffler for generously sharing their time and expertise in the web development of this project.

If you would like to contribute information or biographies about Society of Women Journalists members between 1894 and 1914, please contact Laura Vorachek.

About the Images

• "Manet's Woman Reading on Fleet Street" (2021). Fleet Street (near intersection with Whitefriars Street; looking toward Faringdon Street and St. Paul's Cathedral). Photograph by Ann M. Hale, 3 July 2021, with Edouard Manet's "Woman Reading" (1880-81) from the Art Institute of Chicago


• Fleet Street. Photograph by James Valentine c. 1890.


• Elizabeth Banks. Photograph.Frontispiece to Campaigns of Curiosity: Journalistic Adventure of an American Girl in London. Neely, 1894.


• “Women Journalists Organize.” The Journalist (May 26,1894). Photograph by Laura Vorachek, 2018.