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reading, including the formats in which text was published and purchased, the spaces for reading in groups, how books were selected for reading aloud, and the appropriate styles of delivery. Communal reading was popular because it was efficient. The practice was thought to save eyesight, limited the number of candles required to produce adequate lighting, and required only one person to read while others worked. A whole genre of texts developed to teach readers proper elocution and the physicality of affecting delivery, with titles like A System of Oratory and The Art of Speaking and Reading in Public. Models for reading aloud came from the pulpit and the stage, with a style like the former to be studied and emulated and the latter admired in the theatre but avoided at home. Later chapter titles indicate themyriad permutations in which the written word could be experienced, performed as ‘Verse at Home’ and ‘Drama and Recital’ and with a multitude of subjects available, from ‘Fictional Worlds’ to ‘Piety and Knowledge’. Reading aloud or being read to was considered beneficial, especially for women and young people, both as a relief from idleness and because material that was potentially morally problematic could be discussed and the riskmitigated. Though ‘the rise of the novel’ is held as themajor literary development of the eighteenth century, library catalogues and diaries demonstrate that sermons, histories and travel writing were more popular than fiction, and that geography, topography, biblical commentary, and moral treatises were also widely read. Methodologically, Williams presents a series of vignettes about texts and their readers; these are wide-ranging and vividly wielded to deepen our understanding of reading behaviours. She consults a broad variety of source material for evidence of strategies for reading aloud, recommended settings for book consumption, and the moral, emotional and intellectual effects of reading in both theory and practice, moderating the vocal opinions of published guides and cultural commentaries with examples from a diverse selection of diaries and letters, and includes a careful discussion of the limits of what can be uncovered about the lived experience of readers. The study is primarily focused on the activities of the middling sort, though we occasionally glimpse a duchess’s poetical tastes through her epistles to friends, or catch a servant moved to tears by the novel her mistress read aloud while having her hair dressed. Though limiting her study to practices in the home and, occasionally, in church, Williams hints at a much broader landscape of reading aloud, from the workbench and schoolroom to the coffeeor ale-house, which opens a rich seam for further research. The book is a compelling assessment of the practical, emotional and stylistic engagement with books and reading in the eighteenth century, which not only generously guides the reader through the existing scholarship on the subject, but also effectively pivots the focus to open up new methods and contexts to discover.