Welcome to Twentieth Century Advice Literature:
North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex, and the Family

Twentieth Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex, and the Family allows students and researchers to immerse themselves in the values and behaviors of Americans of the past. The collection provides a window into American social history by bringing together the instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the twentieth century. When complete, the collection will contain 150,000 pages of fully searchable handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave. The collection currently includes 19,367 pages. Learn more >>


FEATURED


How to Write Interesting Letters to Your Men in the Service
"Once your words go out to him, they cannot be recalled, and you are not being a 'good soldier' yourself if you don't give him some bit of joy in each letter" — page 98.


Woman and Girl: A Manual of Personal Hygiene
"Without a good sex education you cannot hope to be a good wife or a good mother" — page 6.


How to Fascinate Men
"It must not be thought that a purposed effort to master the art of captivating men is not feminine. It is certainly feminine to be winsome, adorable, or bewitching and there is nothing immodest for any girl to make use of these attributes when she wants a chance to live a larger, lovelier and nobler life" — page 7-8.


A Guide to Wartime Cooking
"Food must be conserved this way so our fighting forces may be fed, our Allies spared greater suffering and want. So again you will manage, just as you did when money was scarce" — page 4.