What makes individuals happy? What contributes to happy societies? What issues are perceived as critical to collective well-being? Psychologists, social and political scientists, and increasing numbers of economists have been preoccupied with questions like these for some time now. Rather than adding to available research from these areas, this book explores the concept of well-being through a different angle. It analyses people’s discourse of well-being on the basis of a collection of letters to the editor from three national newspapers from late-modern Ireland. In this vein, the study provides empirical evidence of major themes of well-being from letter writers’ viewpoint, and it sheds light on recognisable patterns of text structure and language use. In particular, the following research questions are addressed: What dimensions of social well-being can be isolated as the most important to readers–e.g., social justice, public health?; How does letter writers’ discourse tend to unfold in relation to each of them? Overall, the overview of voices from opinionated contemporary readers presented in the volume is meant to serve as a benchmark for an integrated approach to the Irish public sphere at the turn of the twentieth century.
