█Lane, Gertrude Battles1874╨1941editorBorn on December 21, 1874, in Saco, Maine, Gertrude Lane attended public schools and the private Thornton Academy in her native town, graduating from the latter in 1892. She then traveled to Boston, where she worked as a private tutor for a year. After taking a stenographic course she secured an editorial position with the American Biographical Dictionary Company. During her seven years in that job she also studied English at Simmons College and contributed to the Boston Beacon. In 1903 she moved to New York City and joined the staff of the Woman╒s Home Companion. Her manifest editorial talents enabled her to advance rapidly: she became managing editor of the magazine in 1909 and editor in chief in 1912. Backed by the resources of the Crowell Publishing Company, which had bought the Woman╒s Home Companion shortly before she joined it, Gertrude Lane systematically built it into a leading publication in its field. Although she was less innovative than Edward Bok of the Ladies╒ Home Journal, whose lead she followed in some respects, she had a firm notion of the sort of magazine the mothers and homemakers of America needed. Practical advice in home decorating, food preparation, fashion, family health, and related topics was presented in the most up-to-date and appealing form. The ╥Better Babies Bureau╙ was a particularly successful department of the magazine. From 1935 she relied much on a unique nationwide network of 1500 unpaid reader-editors, whose comments and answers to detailed questionnaires provided invaluable insights into the needs and preferences of the reader-consumer. She had a keen eye for the sort of fiction that would attract her readers and paid high prices for work from Kathleen Norris, Ellen Glasgow, Willa Cather, Edna Ferber, Pearl Buck, Booth Tarkington, Sinclair Lewis, and others. Other contributors included four presidents╤Taft, Wilson, Coolidge, and Hoover╤and during the 1930s Eleanor Roosevelt, who had a regular page. Lane was shrewd in the equally essential task of promotion and made the Companion page a much sought commodity among advertisers. By 1937 the Woman╒s Home Companion was the leading woman╒s magazine in the country, and by 1941, after 29 years of Lane╒s editorship, it was the third largest of all American magazines, with a circulation of over 3.6 million and advertising revenues of over $5.9 million. From 1929 she was a vice-president of Crowell Publishing. In addition to her editorial work she served in the Food Administration under Herbert Hoover during World War I and helped plan the 1930╨1931 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. After several years of declining health she died in New York City on September 25, 1941. fstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ ! 5¬ ) !I !I !I P !I f !I ∙ 5¬ · !I J !I ` !I !I !I ≈ !I ▐ !I !I ▐ !I !I ▐ !I ! !I ▐ + !I └ !I ▐ ╤ !I 4 !I = !I o 5¬ p !I | !I Æ !I ^link ` HYPR ≈ HYPR HYPR HYPR ! +HYPR └ ╤
