‘'I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer'' Review: Instruction Fit to Print
Marriage, under this conception, wasn't a one-time event. It was a process. There were usually four stages, all of them irreversible. First, a couple made a formal vow or commitment to each other to marry. Then came a public agreement and exchanging of tokens—typically a ring or a split coin. Then there was the ceremony and, finally, the consummation, or sexual congress.
Because of this staggered process, it was possible to be in a marriage but not fully married. A 17th-century couple could, for instance, have made vows but skipped the religious ceremony, in which case their marriage would be legally considered 'valid but not legitimate.' If vows had been exchanged but parental consent withheld, the couple was in the awkward position of being neither married nor permitted to marry anyone else. Ever.
Into this odd (to us) situation entered the genre now called advice-writing, the earliest example of which was found in the Athenian Gazette, or Casuistical Mercury, more commonly known as the Athenian Mercury. In ''I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer,'' Ms. Norton, a professor emerita of American history at Cornell University, brilliantly selects the most compelling—or bizarre—examples from this broadsheet, which John Dunton, a London printer, started in 1691. Dunton designed the paper to appeal to the customers of coffee shops, novel establishments where men met to sip that 'newfangled drink,' smoke and gossip. With two friends—including Samuel Wesley, the father of John and Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism—Dunton dreamed up 'the question project': Readers could anonymously write in with questions on any topic, and answers would be provided in subsequent editions. The first call for questions evoked such a huge mailbag that the weekly broadsheet quickly began to appear twice a week.
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