The Conquest of Happiness was published by Allen and Unwin in London and by Horace Liveright in New York in 1930. Russell wrote it at a time when his personal life had finally stabilized (his third marriage, to Dora Black, was then relatively happy) and when his public reputation was at its height. The book is divided into two parts: “Causes of Unhappiness” and “Causes of Happiness.”
Russell’s analysis of unhappiness is characteristically unsentimental. He identifies envy, competition, boredom, fatigue, the sense of sin (instilled by puritanical upbringing), persecution mania, and fear of public opinion as the primary obstacles to happiness — and he treats each not as a mysterious affliction but as a habit of mind that can be understood and, to a significant degree, corrected. His account of envy is particularly acute: he traces it to the habit of comparing one’s own situation with that of others (a habit he considers both universal and entirely destructive) and recommends the cultivation of “impersonal interests” — interests pursued for their own sake rather than for competitive advantage — as the cure.
The positive prescriptions are equally specific: Russell advocates zest (enthusiastic engagement with life’s variety), affection (both given and received, without possessiveness), interesting work (work that involves skill, construction, and the completion of projects), and a sense of proportion (the recognition that one’s own troubles, however painful, are not cosmic in significance).
The book’s continuing appeal lies in its refusal of both self-help platitudes and philosophical abstraction. Russell writes as someone who has himself been unhappy — severely so, in his youth — and who has thought carefully about what changed. His prescriptions are not universal truths but the considered observations of an exceptionally intelligent man who has paid attention to his own experience and that of others.
Collecting The Conquest of Happiness
First edition (Allen and Unwin, London, 1930): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
- Very good: $75–$200
- US first (Liveright, 1930): $100–$250