American Women's Club Magazine, 1925–1936 - Key Data

Founded in May 1899 as the Society of American Women in London, the American Women’s Club (AWC)—as it became known in 1916—was an organisation for female expats from America. In the first edition of the American Women’s Club Magazine (AWCM), the club’s first president, Mrs. Hugh Reid Griffin, described how the AWC stemmed from a shared belief that “serious social intercourse would lead to useful service and would create a centre of our own in the land of our sojourn”. By the 1920s the AWC had 1,500 members and boasted a lavish, fully-staffed headquarters at 46 Grosvenor Street in Mayfair.

Consisting of nearly 3,400 images, this collection brings together editions of the ACWM that were published monthly between January 1925, when the magazine was launched, and December 1936. Articles in the AWCM detail the club’s history and evidence its outgoing, civic ethos. The collection provides detailed insights into the varied social, educational, and philanthropic activities that AWC members pursued. It likewise illuminates the extensive local, national, and international (especially transatlantic) networks within which the club and its members operated. An intriguing collection, it sheds light upon the influential women’s clubs movement throughout the early twentieth century, as well as upon the wider social, political, and cultural contexts that precipitated and shaped institutions like the AWC.