The Athenian Mercury鈥�a one-page, two-sided periodical published in 1690s London鈥攊ncluded the world鈥檚 first personal advice column. Acclaimed historian and Pulitzer Prize鈥揻inalist Mary Beth Norton鈥檚 鈥�I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer鈥� is a remarkable collection of questions and answers drawn from this groundbreaking publication.
In these exchanges, anonymous readers look for help with their most intimate romantic problems鈥攁bout courting, picking a spouse, getting married, securing or avoiding parental consent, engaging in premarital sex and extramarital affairs, and much more. Spouses ask how to handle contentious marriages and tense relationships with in-laws. Some correspondents seek ways to ease a conscience troubled by romantic and sexual misbehavior. The lonely wonder how to meet a potential partner鈥攐r how to spark a warmer relationship with someone they already have an eye on. And both men and women inquire about how to extract themselves from relationships turned sour. Many of these concerns will be familiar to readers of today鈥檚 advice columns. But others are delightfully strange and surprising, reflecting forgotten social and romantic customs and using charmingly unfamiliar language in which, for example, 鈥渒issing is a luscious diet,鈥� a marriage might provide 鈥渕uch love and moderate conveniency,鈥� and an 鈥渁morous disposition鈥� can lead to trouble.
Delightful and entertaining, 鈥�I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer鈥� provides a unique, intriguing, and revealing picture of what has鈥攁nd hasn鈥檛鈥攃hanged over the past three centuries when it comes to love, sex, and relationships.
Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emerita of American History at Cornell University. Her books include the Pulitzer Prize–finalist Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power in the Forming of American Society; 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, winner of the George Washington Prize; In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692; and Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women.
“From the coffeehouses of seventeenth-century England to the sipping spots of contemporary America, Mary Beth Norton’s collection of the world’s first advice column demonstrates the timelessness of personal dilemmas: How can I find love? How can I flee? How can I silence my mother-in-law? Why do I feel this way? 'I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer' shows that it was ever thus. We owe the compassionate advice-givers of the Athenian Mercury gratitude for inventing an indispensable genre, and further gratitude to Norton for discovering and reviving this interesting and entertaining work.”—Amy Dickinson, “Ask Amy” advice columnist
"'I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer' is a captivating and delightful anthology of the seventeenth-century’s romantic travails (as depicted in one relevant periodical). It’s a total page-turner, both poignant and often hilarious. And if you put a copy in a perfumed envelope, it’ll probably be the perfect gift for that special friend too.”—Rick Moody, author of The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony
“Mary Beth Norton, one of the foremost historians of early American women and gender, gives us a look at the early modern version of Dear Abby meets Modern Love, uncovering what folks in the seventeenth-century British Atlantic world were wondering—and willing to ask an advice column—about love and sex. Ranging from the physiological to the philosophical, the questions are as revealing as the answers.”—Karin Wulf, author of Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia
