Bok, Edward

Edward Bok, in full Edward William Bok, (born October 9, 1863, Den Helder, Netherlands—died January 9, 1930, Lake Wales, Florida, U.S.), innovative American editor in the field of periodical journalism for women; during his 30-year stewardship of the Ladies’ Home Journal (1889–1919), he effected important reforms and helped shape contemporary American culture.

Growing up in a poor immigrant family in Brooklyn, New York, Bok worked as an office boy for the Western Union Telegraph Company, attended night school, entered book publishing, and (at the age of 24) became advertising manager of Scribner’s Magazine. In 1886 he established the Bok Syndicate Press, for which he developed, as a regular newspaper feature, a full page of reading material for women. The striking success of the “Bok page” led to his elevation to the editorship of the Ladies’ Home Journal in Philadelphia. Bok devised magazine departments to inform and advise women on almost every subject: he campaigned for woman suffrage, sleeping-car improvement, wildlife conservation, and clean cities and towns; he opposed roadside billboards, public drinking cups, and power-company encroachment at Niagara Falls, New York. His announcement in 1892 that he would accept no more patent medicine advertising opened the way for a crusade that enlisted other editors and culminated in the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906). His boldest venture was to break the taboo against the printed mention of venereal disease. By 1917 readers of the magazine were sending him nearly one million queries annually for public reply.

Bok’s autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. He devoted the rest of his life to philanthropy and social causes, particularly in the areas of civic improvement and world peace.