"I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer"

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 lo