The history of emotions is flourishing as a discipline; yet whether happiness and suffering properly belong to the category of emotion has long been the topic of philosophical discussion and debate due to their greater association with the body and the senses, rather than the mind. Suffering and happiness contributes to this conversation through an exploration of these themes at a moment when, it has been argued, happiness moved from an aspiration to be achieved in the hereafter to a condition that could be produced on earth through the alleviation of suffering and the pursuit, if with some limitations, of everyday pleasures. After a scholarly introduction, this collection offers eleven chapters from a prestigious line-up of English social historians across three sections. Early chapters offer an overview of the concept across the early modern period and into the nineteenth century, reflecting on changing meanings in secular and religious contexts. Part ii looks at how the language of happiness and suffering was deployed for social and political ends, such as in petitioning or print culture. Part iii turns to more personal considerations, with chapters exploring how individuals accounted for happiness, pleasure or pain in their own writings, or in relation to belongings or practices like breastfeeding. The volume is marked by a consideration of the lives of ‘ordinary’ people and particularly the poor, providing a novel and useful contribution to a set of emotions often located as the domain of art and philosophy. If the history of emotions tends to be closely associated with cultural history and its methods, this volume is resolutely social history. It feels somewhat at odds with developments in the broader field that have sought to think about emotional language and its relationship to experience through a different set of lenses, but may well be more suitable for emotions that are not quite emotions. The essays are richly researched, offering novel insights and rewarding reading.