An often maligned and much parodied journalistic genre—though a telling and accurate barometer of moral assumptions and shifting sexual attitudes—the advice column has been a staple of various venues of American journalism for over a century.

Ironically, the grandmother of all advice columnists, Dorothy Dix, never existed in the real world at all. In fact, none of the major columnists—from Dix and Beatrice Fairfax to today's Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren—were real people, as such. In keeping with a turn-of-the-century custom that persisted into the 1950s among advice columnists, pseudonyms were assumed by most women writing what was initially described as "Advice to the Lovelorn" or "Lonelyhearts" columns. In the pioneering days of women's rights, journalism was one of the few professions sympathetic to women. In the so-called "hen coop" sections of papers, several progressive women used the conventional woman's section—including...