[1] The first issues were priced at 50 cents a year and published in Seneca Falls, New York, as a monthly, eight-page, three-column publication.

This expansion of focus was partly through the influence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a contributor to The Lily, who wrote under the pseudonym "sunflower".

[2] Bloomer involved many editors and contributors who helped one another with the publication process, and this became a model for later periodicals focused on women's suffrage.

[3] One source describes the range of contents within The Lily, "An intriguing mix of contents ranging from recipes to moralist tracts, The Lily captivated readers from a broad spectrum of women and slowly educated them not only about the truth of women's inequities but in the possibilities of major social reform.

For example, a May 1849 issue contained the following example: "A man when drunk fell into a kettle of boiling brine at Liverpool, Onondaga Co. and was scaled to death.

[1][2] She explained that this clothing style was essential to the health and safety of women, by reducing risks from carrying children and candles up stairs.

In an article, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a Lily contributor, demanded that women be included in lawmaking to restrict liquor sales and divorce intemperate men.

Increasingly the newspaper saw solutions to the dangers of drunken husbands to lie in greater rights for women and larger structural changes.

[2] One source recounts an 1853 mission statement printed in the paper that explained that The Lily would "labour for the emancipation of women not only from 'unjust laws' but also 'from the destructive influences of Custom and Fashion.

'"[2] In a biography of Amelia Bloomer written by her husband, she is quoted as declaring that she never liked the "pretty" name of the paper (appointed by the local women's temperance society), but since the newspaper soon became known far and wide by that name, she decided not to change it.

In 1854 or 1855, Amelia Bloomer sold the paper to Mary Birdsall because she was moving to a new house in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which lacked facilities for newspaper publication.