Ruth Dickson

Ruth Dickson was a bestselling lightning rod for controversy and a reliable source of entertainingly contrarian opinions about marriage, love, sex, adultery, and how much any of these subjects had in common when she burst onto the publishing scene in the late 1960s. Among Dickson’s titles are Married Men Make the Best Lovers, a survival manual for mistresses; Marriage Is a Bad Habit, an impassioned argument for unwedded bliss; and Now That You’ve Got Me Here, What Are We Going to Do?, which has been referred to as a “non-marriage manual.”

She long ago lost count, but Dickson has lived in more than two hundred places on three continents but now calls Florida her (possibly temporary) home. Still going strong well into her eighties, Dickson recently published a new book, Life, Death, and Other Trivia: Outrageous Observations of a Wicked Old Broad, which includes many extracts from her blog.

Just in case you were born yesterday, Dickson is here to tell you that Sex in the City did not start with Carrie Bradshaw. Ruth Dickson was a writing and popularity rival for Helen Gurley Brown in Brown’s heyday, right after the publication of Sex and the Single Girl. Current readers, given the perspective of time, will be best equipped to judge, which of the two was the better, smarter, and wittier writer.