19th Century Personal Ads

Love For Sale: Personal Ads From the 19th Century

June 19, 2009

19th Century Personal Ads

19th Century Personal Ads

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by POPSUGAR Sex & Culture 5

It's not often a history dissertation warrants consideration outside a university, but Pam Epstein, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University, has turned hers into a blog worth blogging about. She's using old personal ads to explore love and marriage in mid-19th- to early-20th-century America, and has dug up some real gems — both the ads and the men. What I love is that instead having categories like "missed connections" or "casual encounters," they have "matrimony." Finding a mate was never so easy! Until, that is, you read their "desires."

1 / 13

by POPSUGAR Sex & Culture 5

It's not often a history dissertation warrants consideration outside a university, but Pam Epstein, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University, has turned hers into a blog worth blogging about. She's using old personal ads to explore love and marriage in mid-19th- to early-20th-century America, and has dug up some real gems — both the ads and the men. What I love is that instead having categories like "missed connections" or "casual encounters," they have "matrimony." Finding a mate was never so easy! Until, that is, you read their "desires."

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5 Comments

3 years 46 weeks

Very interesting to study the change in the ideas of love, and how classified ads have changed over the years. I wish you could find person ads like this today... instead the people involved have changed.

MSucre 3 years 47 weeks

What I'm trying to say is that this interesting topic may not be so a-typical after all :)

MSucre 3 years 47 weeks

Do I sense a hint of an anti-academic bias? I know lots of History PhD dissertations that would be very interesting to read outside of the university :) I'm not a History PhD student, but a lot of my friends are, and what they do is (often) very fascinating!!!

MSucre 3 years 47 weeks

Do I sense a hint of an anti-academic bias? I know lots of History PhD dissertations that would be very interesting to read outside of the university :) I'm not a History PhD student, but a lot of my friends are, and what they do is (often) very fascinating!!!

sidra5397 3 years 48 weeks

I loved reading this stuff. It gave me a laugh and made me wonder at how somethings never change.