Marie Manning (writer)

Marie Manning (January 22, 1872 —November 28, 1945) was a newspaper columnist and novelist in the early 20th century. She wrote the first newspaper advice column, Dear Beatrice Fairfax, in 1898, the precursor to modern versions such as Dear Abby and Ann Landers.

Manning was born in Washington, DC to Elizabeth Barrett and Michael Charles Manning. Her year of birth, while thought to be 1872, was unknown to even her immediate family and closest confidants during her lifetime. She was educated at various private schools in the District of Columbia, graduating from Miss Kerr's, a finishing school for girls.

Her mother had died in childbirth and her father died when she was 18 years old. This sent her to England in the early 1890s to live with relatives; here she studied British society and wrote her first novel, Lord Alingham, Bankrupt. It was published in 1902.

Manning began writing as a columnist for the New York World in 1896 at the "space rate" of $5 per week. After being granted an exclusive interview with the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, she was promoted to permanent staff and her salary was raised to $30 per week. When the paper's Editor moved to the New York Evening Journal in 1898, she followed at his invitation. There she collaborated with two other women to create a women's page entitled the "Hen Coop".

During the same year, the Hen Coop received three readers' letters seeking personal advice. Manning suggested a new column exclusively devoted to personal advice. The column was named Dear Beatrice Fairfax at her suggestion, after Dante's Beatrice and her own family's country home in Fairfax County, Virginia. The column began on July 20, 1898 as the first advice column in the United States.

Her advice was an immediate success, and the column received so many letters that the United States Post Office soon refused to deliver them and the Journal had to retrieve the letters itself. Manning's commonsense advice was tremendously popular and was imitated nationwide. But Manning's efforts went largely unrewarded by the newspaper, and her pay and status remained low. She eventually resigned.

...
Wikipedia