1. Summarized from Patricia Okker, Social Stories: The Magazine Novel in Nineteenth-Century America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003).

1. John J. Fry, The Farm Press, Reform, and Rural Change, 1895-1920 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 142. For more on the significance of the social processes behind textual production (e.g. the processes through which stories were solicited, written, vetted, edited, printed, and distributed), see Peter L. Shillingsburg, who makes two especially relevant points. First, he notes that "the influence of production on the book does not begin when the author hands a completed mauscript to the publisher; it begins when the author raises a pen for the first word of a work intended for publication, because of a consciousness of the way books get published." His second point is that "the linguistic text generates only a part of the meaning of a book; its production, its price, its cover, its margins, its type font, all carry meaning that can be documented [...] the social, political, and economic implications of being published by a certain publisher or in a certain series or in a recognizable format condition the reactions to the linguistic text for those persons able to recognize these implications." In Peter L. Shillingsburg, Resisting Texts: Authority and Submission in Constructions of Meaning (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 132-35. 

2. A few women's magazines were launched in the 1830s, but many of the most well-known titles (e.g. Harper's Bazaar, McCall's, Ladies' Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping) began publication in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. See Kathleen L. Endres and Therese L. Lueck, ed., Women's Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines (Wesport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995), 491-492. Farm newspapers go back just as far. The Prairie Farmer began publication in 1841 (as Union Agriculturist and Western Prairie Farmer), while Rowell's American Newspaper Directory lists 67 farm newspapers in 1869. See Geo. P. Rowell & Co.'s American Newspaper Directory, 1869, [181].

3. The publisher claimed that "two-thirds of the population of this country live in the country". N.W. Ayer and Son's American Newspaper Annual, 1910, 1289; the publisher also claimed that "farm folks are the most prosperous class in America". N.W. Ayer and Son's American Newspaper Annual and Directory, 1913, 1343.

4. Ibid.

5. In a 1914 trade advertisement, the publisher claims that the magazine's readers "are the most energetic and advanced women of their individual communities. They are women who want to make the most of their own lives." See the Ayer Directory, 1914, 1341.  Janet Galligani Casey notes that this latter distinction, between farm wife and city housewife, is made explicit in at least two places. See Janet Galligani Casey, "'This is YOUR Magazine': Domesticity, Agrarianism, and The Farmer's Wife." American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography. 14, no. 2 (2004): 191.

6. Katherine Jellison argues that women had very little independence, and less control over where farm capital was spent; she also observes that farm women were viewed more as producers than consumers. See Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913-1963. (Chapel Hill: Universtiy of North Carolina Press, 1993).

7. N.W. Ayer and Son's American Newspaper Annual, 1907, 1177.

8. The magazine published articles advocating better legal rights, and greater financial independence, for women. See, for example, the long series of articles on women's rights under the law, beginning with: Shuler, Marjorie. "Do Your Laws Protect You?" The Farmer's Wife, April, 1927, 8.

1. For more on resistance among farmers to "book farming", see Stuart W. Shulman, "The Progressive Era Farm Press: A Primer on a Neglected Source of Journalism History," Journalism History 25, no. 1 (1999): 28n7.