The magazine was first published in May 1903[1][2] as The Red Book Illustrated by Stumer, Rosenthal and Eckstein, a firm of Chicago retail merchants.

There was short fiction by talented writers such as James Oliver Curwood, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Edith Wharton and Hamlin Garland.

When Long went on to edit Hearst's Cosmopolitan in January 1918, Harriman returned as editor, bringing such coups as a series of Tarzan stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

He published stories by such writers as Booth Tarkington and F. Scott Fitzgerald, nonfiction by women such as Shirley Temple's mother and Eleanor Roosevelt, articles on the Wall Street Crash of 1929 by men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Eddie Cantor, as well as condensed novels, like Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man (December 1933).

[5] Circulation hit a million in 1937, and success continued until the late 1940s, when the rise of television began to drain readers and the magazine lost touch with its demographic.

In 1948 it lost $400,000 (equivalent to $5.07 million today), and the next year Balmer was replaced by Wade Hampton Nichols, who had edited various movie magazines.

The next year, as the magazine was beginning to steer towards a female audience, Wyman died, and in 1958 Nichols left to edit Good Housekeeping.

The new editor was Robert Stein, who continued the focus on women and featured authors such as Dr. Benjamin Spock and Margaret Mead.

In 1982, Charter sold the magazine to the Hearst Corporation, and in April 1983 Smith was fired and replaced by Annette Capone, who "de-emphasized the traditional fiction, featured more celebrity covers, and gave a lot of coverage to exercise, fitness, and nutrition.

[10] A column by Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel reports secondhand though an AdWeek October 10, 2018, article "that after January 2019, Redbook will become an 'online-only destination'.