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autismserenity https://autismserenity.tumblr.com/post/658079031361699840/smallgirlafterall-yesterdaysprint-demorests :

smallgirlafterall https://smallgirlafterall.tumblr.com/post/655586641863426049/yesterdaysprint-demorests-family-magazine :

yesterdaysprint https://yesterdaysprint.tumblr.com/post/653990199911677952/demorests-family-magazine-february-1895 :

Demorest’s Family Magazine, February 1895

Crushed with disappointment that we do not get the rest of this

Doing a search for the exact text didn’t turn anything up. But a ton of old magazines have been scanned in somewhere as pdfs. And a lot of the time the text won’t turn up in searches, either for Mysterious Reasons or because it’s not clear enough.

Searched for Demorest’s Family Magazine, February 1885, by accident, and found that a ton of issues are scanned in and downloadable here –

Vtext - Scholarly Texts and Research at Valdosta State University https://href.li/?https://vtext.valdosta.edu/xmlui/handle/10428/3994

– but not from February 1895.

Hitting Wikipedia real quick to make sure Feb 1895 issues really do exist, and it wasn’t just a typo, revealed that Demorest’s became a smashing hit largely because the publisher’s wife, Philadelphia entrepreneur Ellen Demorest, came up with a way of printing sewing patterns on paper, and offering them them to magazine subscribers.

The magazine itself boasts repeatedly that it’s “the most useful and beautiful magazine in America… now given to each subscriber for two dollars,” which included the option to receive 12 patterns “of your selection and any size, during the year, valued at twenty to thirty cents each.”

There are PAGES of different capes and skirts and dresses and jackets and wraps toward the end of each one, illustrated in engravings and described in lush prose. I apparently am still a total sucker for 1880s American fashions, I wannnnnnnt a polonaaaaaaise. I want ALL OF THEM.

Anyway, this is cool: “Journalist and women’s rights advocate Jane Cunningham Croly edited Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Magazine from 1860 to 1887. Under her leadership, Demorest’s Monthly advocated for female education and employment. Croly promoted female accomplishment with a monthly ‘What Women Are Doing’ column. The column claimed to take ‘note of every woman rancher, banker, dentist or businesswoman… who came to light in a distinctive way in any part of the country.’ Other contributors included Louisa May Alcott, Theodore Dreiser, and Robert Louis Stevenson.”

From what I’ve seen, they took a stab at regularly including women of color in that column, even in other countries.

Fun fact: Croly’s pen name was Jennie June. A few decades later, that would become the pen name of the first transgender memorist, an enby from Connecticut, who co-founded the first trans rights organization, Cercle Hermaphroditos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennie_June_(autobiographer)… which was in New York City… just as Demorest’s Monthly was.

Anyway, I finally found the Feb 1895 issue, in this 1894-1895 volume! Our friend Mr. Frog can be found on page 227 of the book, which is page 257 of the PDF:

Demorest’s family magazine. v.31 1894 Nov - 1895 Oct. https://href.li/?https://hdl.handle.net/2027/chi.79244949?urlappend=%3Bseq=257

The actual story is, however, just*… the goddamn life-cycle of the LITERAL ACTUAL FROG!!*

On the other hand, it’s pretty cute, and has the benefit of actually being true. And it was a hell of a journey along the way. (Your picture was not posted)