January 2015 cover featuring Julie Walters
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Editor-in-chief | Jane Francisco |
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Categories | home economics, women's interest |
Frequency | Monthly |
Publisher | Hearst Magazines |
Total circulation (2011) |
4,336,711 |
First issue | 1885 |
Country | USA |
Based in | New York, New York |
Language | English |
Website | www |
ISSN | 0017-209X |
Good Housekeeping is a women's magazine owned by the Hearst Corporation, featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, health as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Housekeeping Seal," popularly known as the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."
Good Housekeeping was founded May 2, 1885 by Clark W. Bryan in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
The magazine achieved a circulation of 300,000 by 1911, at which time it was bought by the Hearst Corporation. It topped one million in the mid-1920s, and continued to rise, even during the Great Depression and its aftermath. In 1938, a year in which the magazine advertising dropped 22 percent, Good Housekeeping showed an operating profit of $2,583,202, more than three times the profit of Hearst's other eight magazines combined, and probably the most profitable monthly of its time. Circulation topped 2,500,000 in 1943, 3,500,000 in the mid-1950s, 5,000,000 in 1962, and 5,500,000 per month in 1966. 1959 profits were more than $11 million.
Good Housekeeping is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.
The Hearst Corporation created a British edition along the same lines in 1922.
Famous writers who have contributed to the magazine include Somerset Maugham, Edwin Markham, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Frances Parkinson Keyes, A. J. Cronin, Virginia Woolf, and Evelyn Waugh.
In 1900, the "Experiment Station", the predecessor to the Good Housekeeping Research Institute (GHRI), was founded. In 1902, the magazine was calling this "An Inflexible Contract Between the Publisher and Each Subscriber." The formal opening of the headquarters of GHRI - the Model Kitchen, Testing Station for Household Devices, and Domestic Science Laboratory - occurred in January 1910.