Book:Journal/The Ladies' Diary/Historical Note

Historical Note on The Ladies' Diary

Started life as a women's interest magazine, but evolved into a magazine of riddles, puzzles and mathematical questions.

In its later years, many of the questions published therein were difficult, and attracted the attention of high-profile mathematicians of the time.

Many questions it published were ancient. For example:

Question $42$ was a variant of Chiu Chang Suann Jing: Example 8.

Question $51$ was taken from Diophantus of Alexandria: Arithmetica Book $\text {V}$.

It was also frequently the case where the questions were taken directly from published sources, sometimes even mathematics textbooks.

Sources

• 1992: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Puzzles ... (previous) ... (next): The Ladies' Diary or Woman's Almanac, $\text {1704}$ – $\text {1841}$