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."
The magazine 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. In 1966 it reached 5,500,000 readers.
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.
Good Housekeeping Research Institute
In 1900, the "Experiment Station", the predecessor to the Good Housekeeping Research Institute (GHRI), was founded.
The formal opening of the headquarters of GHRI - the Model Kitchen, Testing Station for Household Devices, and Domestic Science Laboratory - occurred in January 1910.
In 1909, the magazine established the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Products advertised in the magazine that bear the seal are tested by GHRI and are backed by a two-year limited warranty. About 5,000 products have been given the seal.
[Walter Nicholls, , Washington Post, January 2, 2008]In April 1912, a year after Hearst bought the magazine,
Harvey W. Wiley, the first commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (1907-1912), became head of GHRI.
Social activism
The magazine advocated for pure food as early as 1905, helping to lead to the 1906
Pure Food and Drug Act. It prohibited the advertising of
cigarettes in the magazine in 1952, 12 years before the
Surgeon General's warning labels were required on cigarette packs. During the 1930s, it endorsed the
Ludlow Amendment, which sought to require that any
declaration of war, except in the event of an invasion, be ratified by a direct vote of the citizenry.
See also
