Asking for a friend

The world's first advice column was printed in 1691. From queries sent to newspapers to questions posed on Quora and Reddit, how have our intrusive thoughts fared through the 21st century? A new book helps readers weigh the value of advice from then to now

- Sukanya Datta [e-mail]

“It is my misfortune to be red-haired ... I love a lady that has the greatest aversion imaginable to that colored hair ... What should I do?”

“Is it possible for one woman to love another as passionately and constantly as if the love were between different sexes?”

We do this a lot, don't we? Lay our messy, bizarre and intimate secrets bare before absolute strangers, hoping they will know just what we need? We share our thoughts in newspaper and magazine columns, on Subreddits such as r/AITA, on Quora feeds, and now with AI chatbots.

We've been doing this for far longer than we realise. Since at least 1691, in fact.

That's when the Athenian Mercury, a twice-weekly London broadsheet run by the bookseller John Dunton, began filling its pages with questions, confessions and advice that, centuries later, still resonate.

That was the world's first-ever advice column. But here's the twist: the Athenian never set out to be an advice column. It was meant to be a public experiment called The Question Project developed by Dunton, then 32.

Men, like him, who frequented 17th-century London's many coffeehouses, engaging in wide-ranging debates on religion, medicine, law and culture, could pose their undiscussed questions anonymously here, to what he called The Athenian Society.

The society comprised just Dunton and his two brothers-in-law, Richard Sault and Samuel Wesley. The trio would respond to the queries through the broadsheet Dunton then sold to individual purchasers for a penny each, and by subscription to coffeehouses.