Eighteenth-century readers would have been familiar with the word ‘mentor’ not only as a common noun, but also with a second, figurative meaning, now obsolete. ‘Mentor’ referred not just to a person, but to anything ‘which fulfils the role of an adviser or guide’, and ‘often occurring in the titles of books of advice’. During the period, a subgenre of didactic guide literature emerged which, in their very titles, offered themselves as ‘mentors’ to their readers, with whom they sought to establish a distinct kind of pedagogic relationship. The New Mentor (1789), The Universal Mentor (1763), The Youth’s Mentor (1795), The Female Mentor (1793): mentor books, the personified, literary substitutes for human mentors, abounded in the literary marketplace.