Catriona Clear’s book forms part of the growing historiographical interest in both the lives of ordinary women and in the growth of mass consumer society in post-war Europe, and indeed the intersection of both, from Rebecca Pulju’s work on women and mass consumer society in France to Penny Morris’s work on advice columns in Italian magazines, and Claire Langhamer’s work on how mass culture shaped English understandings of love. Investigating these issues from an Irish perspective, Clear casts new light both on how Irish women engaged with mass culture as readers and letter writers, and on how the magazines themselves responded to the problems, needs and opinions of Irish women in these decades of change.

Women’s voices in Ireland is a comprehensive study of the letters pages of two Irish women’s magazines, Woman’s Life (in the 1950s) and Woman’s Way (in the 1960s). Encompassing both advice columns and discussion pages, Clear’s primary aim is an examination of how readers interacted with both magazines. By taking in the ‘diary’ pages of Woman’s Life, and the ‘miscellaneous’ sections of the Women’s Way letters page, she examines not just how emotional problems were treated in the magazines, but also how the publications served as a public discussion forum for Irish women on topics from women in politics and the workplace to the status of rural women. The growing body of scholarly work on women’s magazines and advice columns in particular makes it clear that such sources can no longer be dismissed as trivial, nor their readers as mere passive consumers of the printed word. Clear is aware of this in her survey of the readership, while demonstrating throughout the book how women interacted with the magazines, at times negotiating, arguing with or simply ignoring the advice and opinions they read.

While the magazines did provide a valuable space for women to discuss social and political issues – and perhaps a unique one in the decades before second wave feminism – the core focus of the book is on the more personal and emotional territory of the problem pages. The Woman’s Life problem page, answered by Mrs Wyse, dealt with a vast panorama of problems; from courtship (the largest category) to work or education, family and marital conflict (although more serious problems such as domestic violence featured very rarely). Comparing it to Angela McNamara’s agony aunt column for Woman’s Way, which ran from 1963 to 1969, yields some valuable insights into how Irish families negotiated the social changes of these decades. We also gain some insight into the demographic peculiarities of late twentieth-century Irish society. While couples across Europe were marrying much younger in the 1950s, Irish couples continued to delay their nuptials, with the average age of marriage of twenty nine. There were a number of logical reasons for a woman to postpone marriage; she could remain working for longer and when access to contraception was limited, later marriage was likely a way of limiting family size. Magazines like Woman’s Life also played their part in reinforcing the notion of the single life as a valid choice for women; Mrs Wyse, we are told ‘respected, even applauded’ the unmarried state, telling one reader that ‘27 is young’ while reassuring the mothers of unmarried women (p. 29). Moving into the 1960s, we see the status of single women becoming somewhat more controversial as couples began to marry younger. However the mere facts of these debates make Ireland somewhat unusual; Clear makes the comparison to Britain where agony aunts frequently counselled young couples not to rush into marriage as such youthful unions were common. They were also however increasingly the norm in post-war Europe more generally, and Italian agony aunts faced the frequent tasks of reassuring young women (in their early 20s) who feared spinsterhood and advising readers against very early marriage. At the same time it was in no way acceptable for a woman to choose not to marry or to delay marriage for long. The relatively privileged status of the single life for Irish women seems to invite further exploration.

Family conflict also loomed large in the magazines’ problem pages; while generational conflict increasingly became an issue that Angela McNamara advised on in Woman’s Way, the issue that was most highlighted in the earlier magazine letters page was that of the adult daughter as carer for her elderly parents. Mrs Wyse was firm that the woman’s duties lay with her parents, while McNamara gave quite different advice in the 1960s, encouraging such women to to seek opportunities in work or education. It is through changes such as these that we can see how the ties of emotion and obligation within the Irish family, and the place of women within it, were evolving.

Clear is also careful to point out the gaps and silences in the letters pages; such sources as she acknowledges cannot be seen as accurate depictions of the problems faced by Irish women. Rather, they reflect the issues that could be acknowledged and discussed in a public forum. Some omissions – such as abortion – are not surprising. However it is more curious as Clear points out, that in the decades when Irish women largely switched from breast to bottle feeding, there is no mention of infant feeding. Neither is there much discussion of migration and the problems of integration and loneliness that migrants to either Irish towns or cities, or to England, might have faced. Such silences perhaps invite further reflection on the place of mass print culture in Irish society, and the ways in which women interacted with it, in these years.

Clear’s fascinating study is extremely comprehensive, highlighting the range of personal issues discussed in the two magazines. I did wish at points that there had been scope to delve more deeply into some areas, perhaps investigating in greater depth the changing emotional registers of both the letters and the advice offered in relation to marriage and the family. Focusing on a narrower selection of those topics discussed in the magazines might have allowed Clear to tease out better what was distinctive about Irish women’s engagement with mass culture and their experience of social change in these decades. Nevertheless it is a fascinating and original study, making a clear argument for Irish women’s magazines as rich and important sources for the social historian.