page_title: Mary Louise Booth
section_title: Harper's Bazaar
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Louise Booth / Harper's Bazaar
caption_attribution_description: cover of Harper's Bazar magazine, USA
context_page_description: Mary Louise Booth was an American editor, translator and writer. She was the first editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar.
  At the age of 18, Booth left the family home for New York City and learned the trade of a vest-maker. She devoted her evenings to study and to writing. She contributed tales and sketches to various newspapers and magazines, but was not paid for them. She began to do reporting and book-reviewing for educational and literary journals, still without any pay in money, but happy at being occasionally paid in books. She said: "It is my college, and I must learn my business before I can demand pay."
  As time went on, she received more and more literary work to do. She widened her circle of friends to those who were beginning to appreciate her abilities. In 1859, she agreed to write a history of New York, but even then, she was unable to support herself wholly, although she had given up vest-making and was writing 12 hours a day. When she was 30 years old, she accepted the position of amanuensis to Dr. J. Marion Sims, and this was the first work of the kind for which she received steady payment.
context_section_description: In the year 1867, Booth undertook another enterprise in assuming the management of Harper's Bazaar, a weekly journal devoted to the pleasure and improvement of the home. For a long time, she had good relations with the Harpers, the four brothers who founded the magazine which bears their name, and who conducted its business.
  Under her editorial management, it was very successful, numbering its subscribers by the hundred thousand. While she had assistants in every department, she was herself the inspiration of the whole corps. The influence of such a paper within American homes was highly regarded. Through its columns, its editor made her hand felt in countless families for nearly 16 years, and helped to shape the domestic life of a generation.
caption: Harper's Bazaar (1883)
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