It was on this day (July 30) in 1996 that Margaret Cousins, one of the most important magazine editors of her day, died in San Antonio, Texas, at age 91.
If Cousins is little remembered today, it is most likely because she spent much of her career in the era when women's magazines were commonly edited by men, and she never attained the top spot on any masthead where she worked. Most significantly, she served as the longtime managing editor of Good Housekeeping and McCall's during the editorship of Herbert Mayes, a collaboration that began in 1936 and continued into the 1960s.
In his 1980 memoir, "The Magazine Maze," the notoriously hard-to-please Mayes wrote that, "Editorially there was nothing Miss Cousins couldn't and didn't do. She could have been editor-in-chief of any magazine. When I had the opportunity to make her one, I didn't, convinced the political stresses she despised would depress her. She should have had the chance. I disappointed her. And, in the end, myself also."
Cousins, who is often referred to as Maggie, left the magazine business to edit books, including President Lyndon Johnson's 1971 memoir, "The Vantage Point," but later returned as fiction editor of Ladies' Home Journal, during the editorship of John Mack Carter.
Cousins was also a widely published short-story writer.
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