Hester Chapone News Today

From the dangers of being a “sexual vampire” to the best ways to charm your in-laws, here’s what relationship advice looked like in the past.

Culture Club/Getty Images Long before Helen Gurley Brown, Oprah, or Dear Abby dished out a single bit of dating advice, there was Hester Chapone, who declared in a 1773 bestseller that “all your happiness in this world … will probably depend on the companion you fix to for life.” The “conduct books” of Chapone and her contemporaries were the go-to source of advice for young women in the 18th- and early-19th centuries—the pre-Victorian era commonly referred to as the Regency era for ...