The first advice columns in the United States appeared in the late 19th century with the rapid expansion of mass-circulated newspapers and magazines. As literacy rates rose and urban populations grew in the United States and Britain, newspapers began including regular features that addressed readers’ personal concerns.

One of the earliest official advice columnists in the United States was Marie Manning, whose column Ask Beatrice Fairfax was published in the New York Evening Journal beginning in 1898. The column became so popular that the New York post office refused to collect any Beatrice letters, forcing the Journal to pick them up separately. Manning’s column established the format which is now standard: A letter from a reader about a personal issue, printed in full, followed by a personalized response from “Beatrice.” The Beatrice Fairfax letters often dealt with issues related to courtship, marriage, household management, and social etiquette. The column was serialized until Manning’s death in 1945.

By the early 20th century, advice columns had become a staple of local newspapers across the United States. In 1918, Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, who published columns under the name “Dorothy Dix,” became the first nationally syndicated advice columnist. Her work reached millions of readers and reflected changing social norms surrounding women’s rights. Gilmer’s writing demonstrates the social value of advice columns, which reinforce prevailing social conventions while also forcing public debate about important social issues. This pattern continued during the 20th century with the work of Pauline Phillips, whose “Dear Abby” column in the San Francisco Chronicle advocated for empathy regarding sexuality, mental health, and political tensions. Like its predecessors, this column reflected changing social norms and beliefs.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, advice columns migrated to digital platforms, and many online publications introduced specialized columns addressing specific issues, such as the New York Times’s The Ethicist, which deals specifically with ethical dilemmas. Digital formats enabled anonymity and faster reader interaction for advice columnists and allowed for a wider variety of perspectives from both readers and columnists.

In Dear Debbie, Freida McFadden draws on this history to build suspense surrounding her primary narrator, an advice columnist named Debbie. The novel reflects a familiarity with the history of advice columns and a willingness to subvert the expectations of the genre. Like many of her predecessors, Debbie fields letters primarily from women. The issues addressed in these letters are typically domestic, focusing on the writers’ marriages, children, and social circles. While the letters conform to expectations for the genre, Debbie’s violent, callous responses to her readers contradict readers’ expectations of advice columns. Each letter begins with a piece of standard, inoffensive advice. However, Debbie also suggests violent solutions to her readers’ problems, such as permanently disabling their husbands’ hearing, breaking gas lines, and even outright murder.

The discarded Dear Debbie draft letters that appear throughout the novel thus act as a subversion of the traditional genre of advice columns. The fact that Debbie brings violence into a typically genteel, feminine genre reflects the violence inherent in her personality.