Seventeen is known to U.S. readers as the title of a 1916 novel by Booth Tarkington (1869–1946). It also is the name of a popular monthly magazine for teenaged girls that has been continuously published since 1944.

The full title of Tarkington's novel is Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and the Baxter Family, Especially William. Once required reading for generations of high school students, the novel is a humorous account of life as seen through the eyes of an adolescent boy growing up in the early part of the twentieth century.

The magazine Seventeen helped define the culture of American youth after World War II (1939–45). The magazine was the first publication entirely devoted to the needs and likes of adolescents, more specifically to "young fashions and beauty, movies and music, ideas and people." Founding editor Helen Valentine borrowed its title from Tarkington's novel to appeal to the age group she...