I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer - by Mary Beth Norton (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In the late seventeenth century, the bookseller John Dunton began soliciting anonymous questions for a new broadsheet periodical, The Athenian Mercury, that he hoped would provide entertainment and discussion fodder for patrons of London's many coffeehouses. These questions, dutifully answered by Dunton and his two collaborators, covered a wide range of topics, from the Bible to medicine and law. But shortly after the periodical launched, Dunton began to receive many questions about personal relationships, particularly about courtship, marriage, and sex. In this book, Mary Beth Norton presents a broad selection of these personal inquiries from The Athenian Mercury, a group of questions and answers that constitute the first known personal advice column. Through these entertaining exchanges, organized by theme, contemporary readers gain a unique glimpse into some of the social and romantic conventions and personal preoccupations of the day. The book includes an introduction that provides historical context about the Mercury, as well as about legal and social conventions of the time, and a list of further reading"--

Book Synopsis

A fascinating collection of questions and answers--about courtship, marriage, love, and sex--from a seventeenth-century periodical

The Athenian Mercury--a one-page, two-sided periodical published in 1690s London--included the world's first personal advice column. Acclaimed historian and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Mary Beth Norton's "I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer" 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--about 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--or 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's advice columns. But others are delightfully strange and surprising, reflecting forgotten social and romantic customs and using charmingly unfamiliar language in which, for example, "kissing is a luscious diet," a marriage might provide "much love and moderate conveniency," and an "amorous disposition" can lead to trouble.

Delightful and entertaining, "I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer" provides a unique, intriguing, and revealing picture of what has--and hasn't--changed over the past three centuries when it comes to love, sex, and relationships.

Review Quotes

"A cheerful . . . dive into the messy realities of courting, sex and marriage in the 1690s."---John Callagher, The Irish Times

"Amusing . . . [It sheds] light on both early modern social mores and things that have remained stubbornly unchanged."---Natasha Simonova, History Today

"Fascinating. . . . Reading this book provides all the pleasures and insights of [modern] advice columns with the added charm of the writers' antique diction, their pained earnestness and Norton's illuminating commentary."---Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Peering into the prurient details and private lives of others has enduring appeal. [This] work offers an opportunity to revisit what Helen Berry has aptly described. . . as the best 'public transcript' of what interested seventeenth-century readers."---Melanie Bigold, Times Literary Supplement

"Mary Beth Norton has unearthed an astonishing collection of letters."---Bel Mooney, Daily Mail

"[A] delightful compendium of 17th-century advice to the lovelorn."---Judith Flanders, Wall Street Journal

"Entertaining and instructive."---Erica Wagner, Financial Times

"Entertaining."---Ed Bedford, The Indiependent

"["I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer"] shows how eternal our preoccupations with love, sex, and romance are--and both how much and how little has changed in the last few centuries."---Sophia Stewart, The Millions

"[A] colorful sampling of reader inquiries on romance originally printed in the late-17th-century English newssheet the Athenian Mercury. . . . The intriguing exchanges offer a distinctive window into the conservative gender politics of the late Stuart period, in which women's purity was paramount and marriage was the goal to which all individuals were expected to aspire. This fascinates."-- "Publishers Weekly"

About the Author

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.