thumb|The March 1990 edition of "Ask Dr. Goff", a [[medical advice column published in State Magazine]]
An advice column is a column in a question and answer format. A typically anonymous writer sends an inquiry seeking guidance on a situation, and the particular columnist provides a response. Advice column personalities often became closely associated with their specific media outlet.
The genre was popularized on the premise of an older woman dispensing comforting advice and maternal wisdom, hence the colloquial British English agony aunt, and later agony uncle. The nominal writer may be a pseudonym, with any accompanying picture bearing little resemblance to the actual author. Otherwise a team may maintain authorship as a composite, or in effect a brand name: as with the moniker of Marjorie Proops appearing (with photo) long after she retired.
The Athenian Mercury featured the first known advice column in 1690. Traditionally presented in a magazine or newspaper, advice columns have been adapted across broadcast media and internet platforms.
History
The original advice columns of The Athenian Mercury covered a wide scope of information, answering questions on subjects such as science, history, and politics. John Dunton, the bookseller who established The Athenian Mercury, enlisted experts in different fields to assist with the answers. As more people read the columns, questions on relationships increased.
thumb|right|Dix column, 1913
Della Manley, the first recorded woman editor in Britain, began a gossip sheet in 1709, the Female Tattler, which included advice to readers, making her the first Agony Aunt. Her advice column approach was soon mimicked in the Female Spectator, a women's magazine launched by Eliza Haywood.
As Silence Dogood and other characters, Benjamin Franklin offered advice in the New England Courant and later in the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1902, George V. Hobart wrote a humorous advice column, "Dinkelspiel Answers Some Letters", in the San Francisco Examiner. In 1906, a column called "A Bintel Brief" ran in the Jewish Daily Forward in New York, which answered questions from new immigrants. A selection of her columns was compiled in the book If You Ask Me: Essential Advice from Eleanor Roosevelt in 2018.
An unusual advice column that foreshadowed internet forums was "Confidential Chat" in the Boston Globe. Launched in 1922 and published until 2006, readers both asked and answered questions without a columnist as intermediary.
Advice columns proliferated in American newspapers early in the twentieth century as publishers recognized their value in capturing the interest of women, a key advertising demographic. Advice columns specifically for teens became more common in the 1950s, such as "Ask Beth" which began in the Boston Globe and was then syndicated to 50 papers.
Unlike the broad variety of questions in the earlier columns, modern advice columns tended to focus on personal questions about relationships, morals, and etiquette. However, despite the perception that sex was not a topic in advice columns early in the twentieth century, questions about sexual behavior, practices, and expectations were addressed in advice columns as early as the 1920s, although not in the explicit manner that can be found today. As recently as 2000, both the Ann Landers and "Dear Abby" syndicated columns were published in over 500 newspapers. and teaching English as a second language.
A male British columnist felt that his column served several useful purposes: referrals to public services, education, and reassurance. He also noted the cathartic value to the letter writers.
Due their national reach and popularity, advice columns could also be a tool for activism. In the 1980s, Ann Landers wrote an anti-nuclear column and encouraged her readers to clip it and forward it; over 100,000 letters were received by the White House. One million copies of her 1971 column supporting a cancer bill were sent to President Nixon.