Joyce Jackson's Guide to Dating

by Joyce Jackson (pseudonym), Helen Louise Crounse

215 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

Reviews

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read, so long as you have a captive audience to whom to read aloud advice about "fleshly pleasures" and the merits of a "taffy pull" and "popcorn ball party" for date night.

Written from the perspective of a maternal and highly moralistic teenager, Joyce Jackson's popular book runs the gamut in chapters like these:
"Which One of My Personalities Shall I Be Tonight?"
"A Pick-Up: When If Ever?"
"How Many Chances Does A Girl Have?"

Though the tone is severe and kitsch (especially Joyce's long stories about her boyfriend, whose name is Mix), the book surprises with its ahead-of-its-time endorsement of the pursuit of education without much regard to boyfriends' educations.

Tops: a peculiar but enlightened chapter about how a girl can increase vocabulary and her understanding of the human condition by "pleasure-reading" of both non-fiction and fiction (titled "How Can I Say What I Mean?").

[Katie]

This book is amazing. From 1954, the dating advice is pretty great. The chapters are titled: How Hard Should a Girl Be Hard-To-Get?; Which One of My Personalities Shall I Be Tonight?; How Many Chances Does a Girl Have?; and the best - I Want to Get Married Some Day- How Far Shall I Go In School?.

And the illustrations at the beginning of each chapter are priceless. I don't feel a twinge of guilt that I stole this from a library. Honestly, I don't. Most of the time.