During the last decade of the seventeenth century the rapidly increasing influence of female readers found public acknowledgment in many of the projects of John Dunton, London book-seller and publisher. To the Fair Sex he dedicated in 1691 and 1692, first monthly, then fortnightly, and finally weekly numbers of his Athenian Mercury; to them he made special appeal when sales were slow; and to them he presented, in 1693, a short-lived and most unedifying Ladies' Mercury, a publication that may fairly be called the first English periodical for women.