“It’s my misfortune that having red haired … I love a woman in which the biggest imagination for that color hair is … what should I do?”
“Is it possible for a woman to love another such as emotional and frequent such as love was between different sexes?”
“I am now adding a young woman, who … drinks an insufficient amount of coffee, which I think is the reason for her courtship and rescue for my courtship …. I beg your advice.”
We do this a lot, don’t we? Before the absolute strangers, bare our dirty, bizarre, intimate mysteries, hopefully they will know what we need. We share our ideas in newspapers and magazine columns, R/Aita on Quora feeds, and now on Sabardits with AI Chatbots.
Well, we are doing much longer than what we think. Since 1691, really.
When the ethanian mercury, a bookseller operated by John Donton, a twice-twice-wealthy London broadsheet, began to fill his pages with questions, confession and advice, which, after centuries later, still echo our own.
This was the world’s first advice column. But here is the twist: Ethanian is never ready to become a advice column. It was to be a public use, called the “The Question Project”, which was prepared proprietor John Dunton, then 32,.
The idea was simple. A man like Dunton, who repeatedly did many of the 17th-century London coffeehouses, indulged in a broader debate on religion, medicine, law, culture, anonymously called his unreasonable questions anonymously “Ethanian Society”. The society included an alleged jury of experts, actually only Dunton and his two brother -in -law, Richard Sault and Samuel Wesley (who worked for a joint salary of ten shillings!).
The trio responded to the questions through a broadsheet that Dunton would then sell individual buyers for a penny, and for the membership of the coffeehouse.
Ethanian people found questions that they initially estimated:
“Did Adam and Eve eat real apples?”
“What is a star?”
“If a man dies, does his trainee have to serve the widow?”
But within a few weeks, the query and querists began to change. Fast, he found himself in the field of personal inquiries: on courtship, marriage, sexual behavior, cases, divorce. And the Querist, although anonymous, often indicate or declare themselves as women instead of the intended audiences of athanian people: men.
Ethenians evolved quickly, changing their title page, to reflect that from both men and women, questions were welcomed on questions. And so the journey of the advice column began that survived the two versions (Ethanian Mercury and Ethanian Oracle) and countless reprise in the 19th century.
Mary Beth Norton, Mary Bath Norton, Mary Donalone Alger Professor Emerita, Cornel University, Itka, Mary Bath Norton in America, says, “She clearly fills a need: to reach someone who is not in a close associate or family;
It was also needed to hear, and therefore often there were other people like themselves who had not yet answers.
Norton’s new book, “I politely seek your quick answer”: Letter on love and marriage from the world’s first personal advice column (April 2025) is a bit of an od for athanion, and it is also a time-capsule-the answer to questions and answers on the time-time that still resonates today.
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Norton first faced Ethanian Mercury around 2005, while taught at Cambridge University. She was then researching her book by her sex (how to define public-private sectors). That year, he also discovered that the Cornell Library had copies of Ethanian Oracle and some bound versions of the mercury.
Talked to him about the letters. Here were men and women, about 300 years ago, to juggle with so many forebods is still very familiar to us – “How do I love him?” Or “Is it possible to marry someone in hope that will come after love?”.
And yet many questions felt “unexpectedly modern”, she says. (We will come to those people.)
“I wanted to show the readers to show personal dilemmas in the past today so that the readers could recognize what had changed and what was not in the 21st century,” says Norton.
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Norton’s book is conducted in six chapters – each drawn from the responses drawn from the responses of Ethanian people – from the title of courtship (“Kissing is a luscious diet”), a husband or wife (“very love and medium facility”), the mother -father’s consent, promises and pledge, matrimony and dangerous lyson. Each chapter consists of a note by him, which reflects these letters and reactions.
Against the background of the then ruling Protestant Church, which demanded “the day’s alleged excesses, especially prostitution and the subjects of secret marriage, religion, sexuality and morality were included in the minds of both Mercury readers and Ethanian people,” Norton writes.
Some letters about sexual behavior felt “unexpectedly modern” for that time. He said that a relaxed attitude towards sex was shown outside the wedding, which was described by some reporters without shame or a sense of wrongdoing.
While others felt old, even for the time, especially when reporters were uncertain whether their sexual misconduct had made them wrong to take the holy community for them. “
Questions and reactions also revealed a sharp difference in the institution of marriage, especially the role of the right of the parents. At that time, the law needed to avoid parents to choose children’s life partner.
An impersonal letter by a querist is about a young woman who pressured by her father and relatives, a rich but “Moroz and Jealous” agreed to marry former Libertin. He has also rejected a small suiter (possibly our querist), which is “well educated with a suitable fate, calm conversation and an agreed nature, but currently unemployed”. “At the same time, it is believed that she will be happy with her compared to the old spark … What is the most appropriate for the young woman in this regard?”
Ethanian, in its response, offer a rather stoic stance. “We are certain that we will not make you happy, because our advice is neither for the woman to marry,” they say. He should not marry someone from whom he is involved, they add, nor should he go against the wishes of their parents.
Marriage seemed in a state of confusion in itself. There was no clear marriage law before 1753, so questions from Athenian were told about the validity of contracts, public versus private vows and the provisional of various matrimonial agreements.
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About 45% of personal inquiry from time to time, Norton writes, from men and women came 23%; 33% were not identified by the penis.
Although the Ethanian was for London’s coffeehouse, letters reflect that the author was not rich, for most parts. Most middle classes were young, and simply started at a time in marriage or business when reading and writing were no longer alternative, but they were required skills, she writes. And ethanian had only platform to face someone’s problems, seek advice, or at least, the other’s query to face their own dirt, weaknesses and troubles.
The women often asked how to maintain a minor performance, while men were courting them. The men asked more often how to move forward: How far can they go to kiss their beloved? Or how much attention should they pay to a woman’s financial condition?
And sometimes, the conversation took a more serious turn with complaints by both sexes about the derogatory spouse, as the provision of divorce was legally unavailable. In such cases, ethanians often, but also give a lot of answers that, “there is no solution but there is silence and patience …”
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Divorce is now a legal provision. Marriage, also, requires the consent of two emotionally stable adults. Sexual behavior is far more open interaction.
But finance, matters, moral clashes still complicate our lives.
Through all this, the advice column has developed. By the 20th century, it became a prominent of newspapers and magazines, which was mostly identified by “aunt of suffering”. Writers Dorothy Dicks (Dear Dorothy Dicks or Dear Miss Dicks), N Landers (An Landers) and Polyn Philips (Dear AB) carried forward the Ethanian Template, but also modernized, which also modernized moral and practical guidance with a touch of humor, intelligence and sympathy.
Questions, and their experts, are also made in branches for health, career, money, rearing, technology – reflecting age concerns.
The advice column today is posted on AITA (as I as **** e) in the endless section of questions posted on platforms such as Quora or viral, screenshot-worthy dilemma, where modern trolley problems are dissected by strangers in real-time.
And now, of course, there is AI.
In the world with such diverse outlets, why would anyone still advise the column?
“Historians do not know how to predict the future. But as I said, these columns clearly fill a very human need,” says Norton.
Can AI-based therapy fill that requirement to bots or advisors? Can they really tell you if you should brown your red hair, or shave and use a wig?
It is difficult to tell, she says. Was the world’s first advice column also not started as “Question Project”?
