The Cornell Widow

was just gazing at some of the tons of brilliantly beautiful ephemera images over at Ephemera Assemblyman, and I thought I’d post some covers of a Cornellian student-run magazine called The Widow. It enjoyed over six decades of publication (1894-1962) until it was forced to go out of print because of yucky financial problems (ain’t that always the case?). As the Ephemera Assemblyman quotes on his site, The Widow’s name derives from “the college widow,” which was the name co-eds used to ascribe to “the girl who bowled over class after class of freshmen without really landing one.” Lovely. As you might imagine, the contents and images of the magazine could occasionally trend toward the misogynistic. But oh how the designs were lovely. Take a peek…

(All images below courtesy of the Ephemera Assemblyman)

That last cover was for an issue that appeared in 1981 (yes, 19 years after The Widow had actually folded) and was meant to mock the 100-year anthology of The Widow‘s rival, The Cornell Daily Sun).

For more covers as well as some interior content, head over to the Ephemera Assemblyman HERE.

(Initial “I” from HERE)