[2][3] Among the contributors to the magazine were editor Gene Gauntier, and authors Temple Bailey, Ellis Parker Butler, Rachel Carson, Arthur Guiterman, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, Anita Loos, Neysa McMein, Kathleen Norris, Sylvia Schur, John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, Frank Albert Waugh and P. G. Wodehouse.

Notable illustrators included Rolf Armstrong, Władysław T. Benda, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Bessie Pease Gutmann, Rico Lebrun, Neysa McMein, Violet Oakley, Herbert Paus, May Wilson Preston, Olive Rush, Arthur Sarnoff and Frederic Dorr Steele.

The magazine called The Home was only eight pages in size, produced on cheap paper and the subscription price was fifty cents a year.

In 1882, after starting a higher-class magazine without advertising called Young Folks' Circle, Harvey & Finn sold The Home Companion to Mast, Crowell, & Kirkpatrick of Springfield, Ohio.

[3] Phineas P. Mast had hired John Crowell of Lexington, Kentucky to launch and manage Farm & Fireside magazine in Springfield, Ohio.

[3] Farm & Fireside launched in 1877, and the firm acquired The Home Companion in 1883 after realizing the market for content aimed at women.

During the 1880s, the magazine changed size and length, and the quality of the content was improved by the addition of writers such as Maria Louise Pool, James Otis, and Eben E. Rexford.

The cover was created for the first time for the Christmas issue of 1891—covers would not become a regular feature until three or four years later and halftone pictures made from photographs would appear in 1891.

To compete, the Companion went to a monthly publication and cut the price back to fifty cents—at the same time it upped the quality of its articles and writers.

According to Frank L. Mott's History of the American Magazine, the editor, presumably Joseph F. Henderson, wrote of the change in the January 1887 edition: The indiscriminate use and abuse of the term "lady" has robbed it of so much of its meaning that it has been in a measure tabooed by those who deserve the title in its best sense.

[3] The January 1907 issue featured a statement signed by President Theodore Roosevelt entitled, Where I Stand on Child Labor Reform.

[3] Vance was also interested in short stories and the list of authors who published included Frank H. Spearman, Hamlin Garland, Sarah Orne Jewett, Bret Harte, Robert Grant, Jack London, Eden Philpotts, Morgan Robertson and Rafael Sabatini.

London also published coverage of his cruise around the South Pacific under the title, Round the World for the Woman's Home Companion .

Frank Luther Mott, Dean Emeritus of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri and winner of a Pulitzer prize for the History of Magazines in America stated that Lane was one of the greatest woman editors of her generation.

[3] Lane understood her audience and once stated her editorial creed which was aspirational for her readers: In editing the Woman's Home Companion, I keep constantly in mind a picture of the housewife of today as I see her.

Her horizon is ever extending, her interest broadening: the pages of the Woman's Home Companion must reflect the sanest and most constructive thought on vital issues of the day.

[3] During the first World War, Margaret Deland reported from France and Lane spent time in Washington working with the Food Administration.

[3] As part of the eugenics and efficiency movements, child health advocate Mary DeGarmo created a "better baby contest" at the 1908 Louisiana State Fair, modeled after agricultural shows' judgement of the appearance, proportions, and weight of livestock.

[5] In 1913, Women’s Home Companion highlighted DeGarmo's work and sent editor Anna Steese Richardson to begin sponsoring similar competitions at county fairs.

[6] In 1914, the magazine sponsored a "colored baby contest" in North Carolina, a segregated event for African Americans to receive health advice from Black doctors and nurses.

[3] By the 1940s magazines had moved them away fiction and into more non-fiction coverage with an emphasis on features and articles rather than short stories and serials and the Woman's Home Companion followed suit.

Paul C. Smith, who was President of Crowell-Collier in 1954, was named editor-in-chief for Woman's Home Companion, Collier's and The American Magazine.