The Evolution of the Advice Column
Private questions, answered in public, are a window into the great anxieties of our times
The pleasure of the advice column is at odds with its premise. It makes no practical sense to write to a newspaper for advice on an urgent problem, given the days and weeks that will elapse between the questioner sending a letter and the columnist publishing a response. But the draw of the advice column is not really about the questioner getting a timely answer; it’s about readers’ voyeurism and moral theorizing. Unlike self-help books or therapy sessions, the advice column is a public conversation. It invites readers to empathize, judge, mock, and learn. Its history is the history of social change — how secular authorities take over from religious ones, or how an unspeakable scandal like divorce becomes an unremarkable norm.
The roots of the advice column lie in the rambunctious, masculine world of London’s early publishing industry. As Jessica Weisberg details in her smart and breezy history of advice givers and gurus, Asking for a Friend, it all began in 1691, when a quixotic writer, publisher, and entrepreneur named John Dunton wrangled a group of male friends to answer readers’ questions in his new magazine, the Athenian Mercury. The enquiries ran the gamut from earthly to spiritual, from the shape of…
