‘The Courage to Advertise’: Cultural Tastemakers and ‘Journals of Opinion’

This chapter examines a key period in the growth and development of Time and Tide highlighted by its size and price increase in 1928. Exploring Time and Tide’s increased use of illustration, the relationships it developed with a new set of advertisers, and a strategic alliance it forged with the Nation and Athenaeum, the chapter shows how this modern magazine capitalised on contemporary debates about the future of the press and successfully rebranded itself as a leading general-audience weekly review competitive with the New Statesman. The chapter further argues that Time and Tide’s increased emphasis on books following its ‘literary turn’ in 1928 was a key strategy in moving the magazine out of the ‘women’s paper’ category and into the ranks of the intellectual weeklies. At the same, its participation in the cultures of literary celebrity continued to serve a feminist agenda in its promotion of women writers (modernist and middlebrow) as well as the work of female critics such as the periodical’s own director and contributor Rebecca West.