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The place: Greensboro College, North Carolina. The year: 1985. One afternoon, my roommate, Carita, and I stumbled into a Salvation Army thrift store. While browsing the shelves we came across The Art of Dating (1967) by Evelyn Millis Duvall. Inscribed on the inside of the cover was the following: To Cindy, Christmas 1967 Intriguing! Who was Cindy? we thought. What was the relationship of Daddy and Anne, and why did they feel the need to present dear Cindy with a book of dating tips? 
Moments later, Carita and I purchased this masterpiece of advice for a mere fifty cents. A bargain. We took it back to campus and sat under a tree near our dorm. Between classes on beautiful North Carolina afternoons, we took to reading aloud Evelyn's words of wisdom, written for the teens of 1967 (the year that Carita and I were born, I might add). Twenty years from the date of that touching and mysterious inscription to Cindy, a second inscription was added to the book. I was leaving Greensboro to transfer to Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Carita and I were parting. My dearest Abigail ~ A somewhat conscious decision was made to not extend the collection past the 1970s. For one thing, there are just too many crazy books on these topics (not particularly for teens anymore but a lot of sex handbooks and marriage guides and miscellaneous self-help books) for me to collect, and besides, they just aren't as funny or interesting. Good illustrations, good advice for the times, a historical perspective, and especially the humor ~ that is what I search for, and, luckily for you, have been able to find! By the way, although some of this may seem authoritative, please be aware that I don't take anything I read in these books very seriously. For example, the advice in a chapter titled "Never Go to a Man's Apartment" from The Unfair Sex (1953) is probably not very realistic for our times. But then again, the next chapter in that same book is titled "What to Do When You Get There," so maybe we should not dismiss what our mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers were told! How I got here: The Web site was started in 1998, as my contribution to a Webzine that was started up with some colleagues when I was working at the Smithsonian Institution. We were burned out on an intense CD-ROM project (remember CD-ROMs?) and felt a need to do something creative with our growing Web skills. (For a laugh check out an early version on Miss Abigail on Chew-The-Parasite.com, courtesy of the Internet Archive.) After Chew ceased its brief publication run, I moved Miss Abigail to my own site and later to this domain. My big "break" was in September of 1998, when Yahoo picked me as a Pick of the Week. From there the site grew in popularity and rave reviews continued for the next few years (but of course). I even had a weekly column in the London Times magazine for about a year and a half (September 2001 - February 2003). And now, this journey has led to a book! ~ Love always, Miss Abigail Home • About • The Book • Advice • Abiblog • Bookshelf • Contact
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About
the Book Collection and MissAbigail.com
I
can't say that I ever got much more than amusement and fun out of
the book, but I can say that it started a collection that now includes
about 1000 books (and continues to grow ~ did I mention that contributions
are welcome?) spanning from the 1820s to the 1970s, all about puberty,
dating, love, living together, marriage, sex, relationships, etiquette,
home repair, and housekeeping.