The Lady vanishes ... but modern women still have an appetite for magazines

Savvy titles aimed at female readers continue to flourish, say experts

- Donna Ferguson

It launched in 1885 as a "journal for gentlewomen", a place where classified advertisements always attracted the right calibre of domestic staff: one who was savvy enough to buy and read The Lady.

Today, the classified ads for housekeepers and butlers remain, accompanied in the April edition by horoscopes, puzzles, a column praising nightingales, a recipe for grapefruit creams and an article on how to help dogs enjoy road trips.

But not for much longer. Despite claiming to have a "robust" readership of 11,000 "affluent" subscribers, The Lady one of Britain's longest-running magazines is expected to close imminently after the Times and Daily Mail reported that it was going into liquidation.

Far from heralding the end of women's magazines, however, publishing experts believe the demise of The Lady after 140 years actually highlights the remarkable success of print titles that continue to attract female readers in a digital age.

"In today's world, you need to address your niche - and the problem for The Lady is that their niche evaporated," said Jeremy Leslie, founder of magCulture, which stocks more than 700 magazines at its London shop. "We have plenty of examples here which are specialist, have a loyal readership and encourage the belief that there's a very bright future for magazines."

During its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century, The Lady was a classic example of a beautiful magazine with a clear-cut community of readers, he said rather like the women's magazine The Gentlewoman today.