How to Be Happy - A Window in Words
- Apr 20, 2015
- 1 min read
Every now and again, when I’m trawling through some dusty bookshop shelves, I'm drawn to a volume, not because the content is uplifting, exciting or even educational. I pick it up because the title, in just a few words, conjures up a vivid (if quite possibly inaccurate) picture of the author in my mind’s eye and opens a window into another age by reflecting, in sharp focus, the prevalent social or moral attitudes of a certain part of society at a certain time.
In this case, it wasn’t the title of the author’s current book - a treatise for youths, extolling manly virtues and published in 1893 - which caught my eye, but rather that of his (and I’m assuming he’s a “he”) previous work, which is also referred to on the cover.
No surprise to note that he’s anonymous; if my wife found out I’d written a book with that title, I wonder how long I'd stay “happy though married”.
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