This study draws together a range of critical models in order to explore the ways in which the periodical functions as a particular cultural practice, both shaping and being shaped by the society in which it was produced. Focusing upon single women's magazine, Woman, across its entire publication span from 1890 to 1910, the study seeks to contribute a deeper understanding of the periodical text by situating it within its specific social and historical context. Through this comprehensive diachronic approach the study accounts for the changes occurring within a long-lived periodical which does not have one identity but several. The study also explores the complex web of relations between the text, its producers and its consumers, and the function of each in the creation and negotiation of meanings. The fragmentation of the periodical text into separate areas of writing, as well as its multiple points of production (from proprietors, publishers and editors to the many professional and amateur contributors), renders the magazine's construction of a stable textual identity problematic. A central question in the study, therefore, has been how to develop a critical model with which to address the plurality of a text in which genres and voices collide within an overarching editorial framework. The study also aims to redress the balance of existing critiques of the women's periodical press which have tended to marginalise the role of the reader both in the production of the text itself and in its interpretations. While the study explores the ways in which the genres of feature articles and editorials, competitions, correspondence and fiction in Woman functioned within the editorial framework as well as in response to circulating discourses, the central focus of the study is the interaction between consumers and producers in the construction of the text, and the ways readers absorbed, appropriated or resisted dominant modes of editorial discourse.