Elinor Langton-Boyle

Elinor Alice Veilleux Langton-Boyle (died 13 July 1946), also known as Ma Boyle, was a Hawaiian businesswoman and journalist, who operated the Paradise of the Pacific magazine from 1902 to 1944.^[1]

Life and career

Elinor Boyle was born in

Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1900.^[2] While the magazine Paradise of the Pacific had been founded by King Kalākaua in 1888,^[3] Boyle-Langton and her husband, William Langton, took ownership and began publishing the paper four years after arrival.^[2] Even after the death of her husband in 1910, and during her second marriage to James S. Boyle, she continued to publish the paper until health issues (sustained from a fall^[3]) required she stop in 1944.^[2] After long serving as its proprietor,^[4] she sold the magazine to fourteen of its employees.^[3] Her husband died in 1945, and she died on 13 July 1946.^[5] In death, the Honolulu Sunday Advertiser described her as kamaʻāina,^[5] literally meaning a child of the land.^[6]

As the owner of the magazine, it circulated widely both inside and outside of Hawaii.[7] Described by a contemporary of hers, Maile Kearns, as a "pioneer" in color reproductions of artwork for magazines, she routinely solicited artists to create color covers for the magazine (often reproductions) and selected them herself: For Kearns, this was a defining element of Boyle-Langton's ownership of the magazine.^[7] Under her leadership, the magazine was largely full of color, and it devoted significant attention to topics relevant to Hawaii.^[8]

At one point, Paradise of the Pacific may have been among the largest printing plants owned and run by a woman in the United States.^[9]