Life was an American magazine that ran weekly from 1883 to 1936 as a humor magazine with limited circulation. "Time" owner Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936, solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name, and launched a major weekly news magazine with a strong emphasis on photojournalism. "Life" was published weekly until 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 to 2000. 

After 2000 Time Inc. continued to use the "Life" brand for special and commemorative issues. "Life" returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007. The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC. On January 30, 2012, the LIFE.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com. 

When "Life" was founded in 1883, it was developed as similar to the British magazine, "Punch." It was published for 53 years as a general-interest light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes and social commentary. It featured some of the greatest writers, editors, illustrators and cartoonists of its era, including Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in "The New Yorker") of plays and movies currently running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices.
For how long was it published as a general-interest light entertainment publication?
It was published for 53 years as a general-interest light entertainment magazine