La Belle Assemblée

[2][3] La Belle Assemblée is now best known for its fashion plates of Regency era styles, but until the 1820s it also published original poetry and fiction, non-fiction articles on politics and science, book and theatre reviews, and serialized novels, including Oakwood Hall by Catherine Hutton.

[2][3] Other notable contributors to La Belle Assemblée include Mary Shelley.

Indeed, Bell separated the portion of the work dealing with the fashions of the month from the remainder of the publication.

[3]In the 1820s, changing expectations of the role of women in British society coincided with a marked decrease in the intellectual scope of La Belle Assemblée and its competitors, which increasingly focused on fashion and domestic pursuits.

[4] The changes in the early 1820s may have resulted from John Bell's retirement some time in 1821.