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The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home
A vivid exploration of the evolution of reading as an essential social and domestic activity during the eighteenth century
Two centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the time, offering new perspectives on how books have been used by their readers, and the part they have played in middle-class homes and families.
Drawing on marginalia, letters and diaries, library catalogues, elocution manuals, subscription lists, and more, Williams offers fresh and fascinating insights into reading, performance, and the history of middle-class home life.
Two centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the time, offering new perspectives on how books have been used by their readers, and the part they have played in middle-class homes and families.
Drawing on marginalia, letters and diaries, library catalogues, elocution manuals, subscription lists, and more, Williams offers fresh and fascinating insights into reading, performance, and the history of middle-class home life.
368 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 27, 2017
88 people are currently reading
1536 people want to read
About the author
Abigail Williams
29 books9 followersAbigail Williams is Lord White Fellow and Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at St. Peter’s College, University of Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
November 1, 2017
I borrowed this book because... why wouldn't I? It's about books, which is one of my favourite things.
To be clear, this is not an easy read. It's about the ways people read in the 18th century and it's written in very dry, academic language. I almost stopped several times because of the language and the only reason I continued reading was because of the subject matter. To be fair, the fault is mine for assuming this would be an easy read.
The book covers 8 topics:
1. Reading aloud (the primary way people read then) and what that meant
2. How the act of reading was part of social life
3. How books were read
4. How people managed to get their hands on books
5. The pervasiveness of poetry
6. The difference between reading aloud and acting and what that meant
7. How people viewed fiction
8. How people viewed religious and scientific works.
I mentioned that the language was very academic and dry, but the subject matter is really interesting and I picked up a lot of interesting facts. For example, people used to read parts of books rather than from cover to cover, which explains the structure of older books.
And in the section on the novel, it is written that 'the novel might be seen as the antithesis of sociable reading' and so communal reading was encouraged to negate the 'isolating' effects of the novel. This second point was quite surprising to me because the novel is seen as helping to develop empathy nowadays, not encouraging people to become isolationists.
Oh, and if you're a fan of Jane Austen's Mansfield Hall, you'll enjoy the chapter on acting vs reading aloud because it helps to explain why it was so scandalous for the young people in the book to put on a play.
Overall, if you're interested in reading about reading and/or the history of reading, you should pick up this book. The style is a bit intimidating (I probably need a few more reads to properly get everything!) but the information is fascinating.
This review was first posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile
To be clear, this is not an easy read. It's about the ways people read in the 18th century and it's written in very dry, academic language. I almost stopped several times because of the language and the only reason I continued reading was because of the subject matter. To be fair, the fault is mine for assuming this would be an easy read.
The book covers 8 topics:
1. Reading aloud (the primary way people read then) and what that meant
2. How the act of reading was part of social life
3. How books were read
4. How people managed to get their hands on books
5. The pervasiveness of poetry
6. The difference between reading aloud and acting and what that meant
7. How people viewed fiction
8. How people viewed religious and scientific works.
I mentioned that the language was very academic and dry, but the subject matter is really interesting and I picked up a lot of interesting facts. For example, people used to read parts of books rather than from cover to cover, which explains the structure of older books.
And in the section on the novel, it is written that 'the novel might be seen as the antithesis of sociable reading' and so communal reading was encouraged to negate the 'isolating' effects of the novel. This second point was quite surprising to me because the novel is seen as helping to develop empathy nowadays, not encouraging people to become isolationists.
Oh, and if you're a fan of Jane Austen's Mansfield Hall, you'll enjoy the chapter on acting vs reading aloud because it helps to explain why it was so scandalous for the young people in the book to put on a play.
Overall, if you're interested in reading about reading and/or the history of reading, you should pick up this book. The style is a bit intimidating (I probably need a few more reads to properly get everything!) but the information is fascinating.
This review was first posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile
February 1, 2022
In the eighteenth century, the rapidly increasing rates of printing, paper production, and literacy all came together to create a society that was dominated by the presence of the book. “The Social Life of Reading” serves as an interdisciplinary peek into sociology, a history of domesticity, and the social purposes of the book and reading during this period. In a book almost wholly driven by vignettes taken from diaries and commonplace books of the time, Abigail Williams explores how people read, lived with, and curated their libraries. In doing so, she overturns the casual assumption many twenty-first century readers hold that reading has always been a solitary activity divorced from the social sphere.
The word “social” in the title may strike the reader as overly academic, but it really is what makes the book fascinating. In a time when candles were expensive and daylight was at a premium, reminiscences of gathering around a family hearth to tell each other stories (or re-enact a play, or read poetry) was often at the heart of family life. A young woman went out of her way to display that she was reading a book on good manners or the moral virtues, but would often hide her copy of Shakespeare (whose bawdy language and occasionally indiscreet themes were thought to make a proper lady blush).
Young girls often experienced their first instances of socialization through what they saw and read in books. Not only were books enjoyed in social settings, but they also served to reinforce the strictly coded behavioral and gender norms of the time, including showing how young women should act in order to be considered ladylike. Two of the things all young middle class readers had to master was speech and elocution. Wiliams looks at several of these books and draws interesting and distinct lines from the written sermons of churchmen to how one respectable people should speak. This brought not only the morals of the church into the household, but also the refined, confident speech of the person giving the sermon.
It was a time in which books permeated everyday life in ways that they rarely do today. Women would sew utilitarian epigrams in samplers and cushions. The libraries of servants and young girls instilled “moral graces.” The atlas served as a cynosure of the library, ideal for reference when reading adventure stories in far-off places. Family members would keep commonplace books to carefully document their favorite sayings, poems, quips, and maxims. People of all classes and backgrounds used almanacs to consult information about the weather or astrology.
In just about 270 pages, Williams manages to say something about nearly every social and cultural aspect of reading in the eighteenth century that most people could think to ask. It’s admittedly a dry read in places and can sometimes feel repetitive. But for someone interested in a well-researched book about the intersections between the world of books and reading and the culture of domesticity, this is a book that rewards close reading.
The word “social” in the title may strike the reader as overly academic, but it really is what makes the book fascinating. In a time when candles were expensive and daylight was at a premium, reminiscences of gathering around a family hearth to tell each other stories (or re-enact a play, or read poetry) was often at the heart of family life. A young woman went out of her way to display that she was reading a book on good manners or the moral virtues, but would often hide her copy of Shakespeare (whose bawdy language and occasionally indiscreet themes were thought to make a proper lady blush).
Young girls often experienced their first instances of socialization through what they saw and read in books. Not only were books enjoyed in social settings, but they also served to reinforce the strictly coded behavioral and gender norms of the time, including showing how young women should act in order to be considered ladylike. Two of the things all young middle class readers had to master was speech and elocution. Wiliams looks at several of these books and draws interesting and distinct lines from the written sermons of churchmen to how one respectable people should speak. This brought not only the morals of the church into the household, but also the refined, confident speech of the person giving the sermon.
It was a time in which books permeated everyday life in ways that they rarely do today. Women would sew utilitarian epigrams in samplers and cushions. The libraries of servants and young girls instilled “moral graces.” The atlas served as a cynosure of the library, ideal for reference when reading adventure stories in far-off places. Family members would keep commonplace books to carefully document their favorite sayings, poems, quips, and maxims. People of all classes and backgrounds used almanacs to consult information about the weather or astrology.
In just about 270 pages, Williams manages to say something about nearly every social and cultural aspect of reading in the eighteenth century that most people could think to ask. It’s admittedly a dry read in places and can sometimes feel repetitive. But for someone interested in a well-researched book about the intersections between the world of books and reading and the culture of domesticity, this is a book that rewards close reading.
Want to read
January 7, 2018This looks fun! Williams says that within a family, the patriarch was in charge of buying books and of reading them out loud to his family. "Books had an aura of hierarchy and patriarchy: the parson in his pulpit, the politician at the dispatch box, the professor on the podium, paterfamilias in his armchair." No wonder Samuel fuckin' Richardson happened.
September 11, 2021
Ich brauchte das Buch für einen zu schreibenden Text und habe nur einen Teil davon ganz gelesen, aber vom Rest zumindest jede Seite betrachtet, nichts komplett übersprungen und auch nicht nach der Hälfte aufgehört. Das ist das erste Buch hier drin, an das ich so laxe Gelesenheitsmaßstäbe anlege, aber in diesen schlechten Zeiten, in denen ich fast gar keine Bücher lese, muss das reichen. Die gründlich gelesenen Teile waren gut, die überflogenen sind es bestimmt auch.
January 2, 2019
Nicely organized introduction to what it felt like to be a reader in the UK in the 1700s. Fascinating accounts of reading aloud at home and how people fell in love with books in social settings. When a study like this is written for the 21st century, Goodreads will be part of our story. I am intrigued with the overlaps between our time and theirs...both the similarities and the differences.
March 10, 2018
I requested The Social Life of Books from my library because a review I read mentioned something that intrigued me. By the time it showed up, I’d forgotten why I’d wanted to read it. But no matter. If you don’t have an inherent interest in the history of reading and books or in how people lived in the eighteenth century, this is not the book for you, and you can stop reading this now. I, having both, loved it. It’s a work of literary sociology, and so it privileges the general over the specific, and eccentric, but it provides an interesting overview of the enormous importance of books and reading in this century. Williams likes to talk about people “consuming” books and “deploying” the fact of their reading, which reinforces the sociological emphasis.
To some extent, I loved learning about a world in which people read all the time and reveled in discussing what they’d read. Unfortunately, had I lived in that happy time, I’d have had to spend a lot of time sewing and avoiding the “imputation of pedantry.” Though much is taken, much abides.
To some extent, I loved learning about a world in which people read all the time and reveled in discussing what they’d read. Unfortunately, had I lived in that happy time, I’d have had to spend a lot of time sewing and avoiding the “imputation of pedantry.” Though much is taken, much abides.
August 1, 2017
All sorts of eighteenth century reading. Works on elocution, lewd anecdotes to the Family Editions of works from Shakespeare onward, the problems with selling Shakespeare plays that hadn't actually been acted for over a century, the dangers of eyestrain and how having someone read aloud could protect your sight, reading associated knickknacks, and more.
August 28, 2022
I read this book because I like the old-fashioned idea of people reading aloud to one another, and I wanted to learn about a pre-social media time when this was common.
Goodness knows there was much to dislike about the Eighteenth century – just read the first chapter of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume – but I feel a stab of jealousy when I read about people in the Enlightenment era filling their days with lively discussions in coffee houses, reading books to one another in the parlor, and participating in glamorous evening salons with the likes of Voltaire, Mme. de Sévigné, or Ninon de Lenclos.
Unfortunately, this book isn’t what I’d hoped it would be from a quick scan of the cover and table of contents. It quotes some engaging material, and many of the illustrations are enjoyable. Still, it is, at heart, a rather tedious academic study about dry technical aspects of the phenomenon of social reading and the publishing industry.
I am waiting for someone to write something joyous and fun on this topic!
Goodness knows there was much to dislike about the Eighteenth century – just read the first chapter of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume – but I feel a stab of jealousy when I read about people in the Enlightenment era filling their days with lively discussions in coffee houses, reading books to one another in the parlor, and participating in glamorous evening salons with the likes of Voltaire, Mme. de Sévigné, or Ninon de Lenclos.
Unfortunately, this book isn’t what I’d hoped it would be from a quick scan of the cover and table of contents. It quotes some engaging material, and many of the illustrations are enjoyable. Still, it is, at heart, a rather tedious academic study about dry technical aspects of the phenomenon of social reading and the publishing industry.
I am waiting for someone to write something joyous and fun on this topic!
September 10, 2022
4.75 stars. Got choked up by the afterword, didn’t think that was possible for a history book. Highly readable, a strong argument is developed subtly amongst very sweet anecdotal evidence from various diaries which recur through the chapters, allowing you to get to know various ‘characters’. Minus 0.25 stars for the slightly uneven treatment of novels (although Williams is reacting against a hyper-fixation on novels in accounts of the literary landscape of the Eighteenth Century).
August 20, 2018
Not exactly an "enjoyable" read but definitely informative.
July 11, 2024
Summary: A study of reading together in the eighteenth-century home, looking at how books were used and contributed to social life.
In modern life, reading is by and large a silent and solitary activity. We may gather for an author reading or a bookclub. But most of our reading, even via audiobooks is a solitary activity. The big idea in this book was that reading was a social activity, in family and social gatherings in the home. It provided evening entertainment in the home as well as sustaining spiritual life through the reading of sermons and devotional works. Friends gathered to read plays or enjoy poetry. And with the advent of the novel, reading together served to head off the fears of the fantasy life that might be indulged in private reading.
Abigail Williams offers a study at once both scholarly and a fascinating read for anyone interested in reading practices. She draws on elocution manuals, marginalia, library catalogues and subscription lists, letters and diaries, to construct for us the eighteenth century practices for reading, particularly in England. And one of the first things plainly evident is that reading often meant reading aloud. This explains the importance of elocution manuals. She details how people learned to read aloud to convey the cadences, the content, and the feeling of a work, holding the listener’s attention.
She explores the spaces in which reading occurred, primarily around the setting of the home. Within the home, she traces the rise of the library and the furnishings that would go into one. But reading also occurred in taverns, coffeehouses and other settings. She also goes into matters as diverse as lighting, font sizes, and reading habits, which often show a great deal of skipping around.
How did people access books? This varied by class. Full-length books were often too expensive for many in the working classes. Chapbooks and pamphlets and serialized books helped with this. And then there was borrowing, whether from an employer, or a circulating library. People exchanged books, making them available to more than one household. People also created their own “commonplace” books, whether by writing out a poem, or clipping one from a newspaper.
Williams chronicles the rise of the novel. This brought questions of the appropriateness of private novel reading? In addition to saving people from the dangers of private reading, public readings could “edit” out more titillating or otherwise objectionable material. Novels also offered the chance to imagine other lives.
Finally, Williams considers religious reading. Sermons underwent a shift from more extemporaneous to more structured and elaborated as they were written and published. Elocution was vital both in the pulpit and the home, to hold attention. People read together for self-improvement. It could be the Bible, works of devotion, history and science. Williams acquaints us with the most popular books of the time.
The book includes an abundance of illustrations of paintings of different readers and settings, reproduction of various forms of books including commonplace books and diaries and letters. Williams breaks the stereotype of reading as anti-social, at least in the eighteenth century. The book also gestures at the opportunity for books to be shared entertainment in our day. She introduces us to what may be a lost art, except among actors, of elocution. And it made me wonder what future cultural historians might write about books and reading in our time.
In modern life, reading is by and large a silent and solitary activity. We may gather for an author reading or a bookclub. But most of our reading, even via audiobooks is a solitary activity. The big idea in this book was that reading was a social activity, in family and social gatherings in the home. It provided evening entertainment in the home as well as sustaining spiritual life through the reading of sermons and devotional works. Friends gathered to read plays or enjoy poetry. And with the advent of the novel, reading together served to head off the fears of the fantasy life that might be indulged in private reading.
Abigail Williams offers a study at once both scholarly and a fascinating read for anyone interested in reading practices. She draws on elocution manuals, marginalia, library catalogues and subscription lists, letters and diaries, to construct for us the eighteenth century practices for reading, particularly in England. And one of the first things plainly evident is that reading often meant reading aloud. This explains the importance of elocution manuals. She details how people learned to read aloud to convey the cadences, the content, and the feeling of a work, holding the listener’s attention.
She explores the spaces in which reading occurred, primarily around the setting of the home. Within the home, she traces the rise of the library and the furnishings that would go into one. But reading also occurred in taverns, coffeehouses and other settings. She also goes into matters as diverse as lighting, font sizes, and reading habits, which often show a great deal of skipping around.
How did people access books? This varied by class. Full-length books were often too expensive for many in the working classes. Chapbooks and pamphlets and serialized books helped with this. And then there was borrowing, whether from an employer, or a circulating library. People exchanged books, making them available to more than one household. People also created their own “commonplace” books, whether by writing out a poem, or clipping one from a newspaper.
Williams chronicles the rise of the novel. This brought questions of the appropriateness of private novel reading? In addition to saving people from the dangers of private reading, public readings could “edit” out more titillating or otherwise objectionable material. Novels also offered the chance to imagine other lives.
Finally, Williams considers religious reading. Sermons underwent a shift from more extemporaneous to more structured and elaborated as they were written and published. Elocution was vital both in the pulpit and the home, to hold attention. People read together for self-improvement. It could be the Bible, works of devotion, history and science. Williams acquaints us with the most popular books of the time.
The book includes an abundance of illustrations of paintings of different readers and settings, reproduction of various forms of books including commonplace books and diaries and letters. Williams breaks the stereotype of reading as anti-social, at least in the eighteenth century. The book also gestures at the opportunity for books to be shared entertainment in our day. She introduces us to what may be a lost art, except among actors, of elocution. And it made me wonder what future cultural historians might write about books and reading in our time.
March 28, 2018
A requested Christmas present book, I finally picked this up and read it and it was very enjoyable. As a librarian who has always loved to read aloud (and given many opportunities as an elementary school librarian) I often notice when reading aloud is part of a story (thinking now of the Ingall’s family in The Long Winter when they make a stack of periodicals last by only reading one episode of a serial story every day). In this very readable history, Abigail Williams seeks to extrapolate the reading habits of the English during the 18th century from the huge amount of written evidence left behind. Using inventories, commonplace books and letters, the author introduces us to the way people of different walks of life were able to enjoy written material in the many forms produced during that century.
Read
December 1, 2021Leitura comunal,coletiva,em família em voz alta é um hábito de outrora que admiro.Aqui nesta obra detalha em tópicos estes tipos de leitura e seus leitores,assim como a popularização dos livros de ficção que impulsionou a leitura solitária e individual, nascendo um novo tipo de leitor.
Nota-se também a grande preocupação é temor que a cultura patriarcal tinha em controlar tudo o que as mulheres liam para controla-las,moralizar e "educar" ,como se fossem seres fracos de mente e não tivessem capacidade de discernimento.
E um livro cheio de curiosidades e informações retiradas de cartas,diários sobre os hábitos peculiares de leitura e como pessoas tinham acesso e guardavam os livros. Interessante.
Nota-se também a grande preocupação é temor que a cultura patriarcal tinha em controlar tudo o que as mulheres liam para controla-las,moralizar e "educar" ,como se fossem seres fracos de mente e não tivessem capacidade de discernimento.
E um livro cheio de curiosidades e informações retiradas de cartas,diários sobre os hábitos peculiares de leitura e como pessoas tinham acesso e guardavam os livros. Interessante.
July 29, 2022
This was a suprisingly engagingly written (not dry) and fascinating depiction of how people in the Eighteenth Century read - aloud, with commonplace books, verse, theater, for religious reasons, in short segments and in a serial form. The book mixes interesting facts and reference to texts of the time with first hand evidence in the form of diary extracts from various invidual and create a lively, personal and fascinating story about how and why people chose to read at this time.
Many themes overlap with todays world like wanting to have a library to show of your worldliness, a short attention span for long books and monitoring/filtering/censoring of peoples reading.
Many themes overlap with todays world like wanting to have a library to show of your worldliness, a short attention span for long books and monitoring/filtering/censoring of peoples reading.
March 6, 2023
This took me two or three years of on and off reading to finally finish, so clearly it was not the most riveting...! But I generally like learning about things that I otherwise take for granted in my day to day existence (books, the alphabet, linguistics) and this scratched that itch. Plus I got a chuckle out of thinking about what a renegade I would have been back in the 1700s: "Reading novels was thought by many to be seductive, dangerous, and enervating for those who consumed too much, too fast."
February 26, 2019
Great idea!
I had quite a few surprises in the reading of this book. I hadn't realized people didn't read books on their own, or all the way to completion. I had not realized there was a name for collecting quotes (chapbook or commonplace book), or that people feared "performance" readings or becoming pedantic with popular science or history books (as opposed to being a scholar). I questioned my own book collecting and note taking. Excellent work, thought provoking.
I had quite a few surprises in the reading of this book. I hadn't realized people didn't read books on their own, or all the way to completion. I had not realized there was a name for collecting quotes (chapbook or commonplace book), or that people feared "performance" readings or becoming pedantic with popular science or history books (as opposed to being a scholar). I questioned my own book collecting and note taking. Excellent work, thought provoking.
July 29, 2024
I enjoyed this book, particularly because I enjoy reading novels set during the time period. Given the amount of reading aloud that people at many levels of society seemed to be doing, I now wonder why the heroes and heroines in the historical novels read primarily as a solitary activity. The book was entertaining and accessible and certainly gave me a different view of how people accessed and used books in the Eighteenth Century.
March 8, 2018
Drawing from such sources as marginalia, diaries, letters, library catalogues, elocution manuals, and subscription lists, Williams explores how shared reading shaped the lives and culture of the time and offers insight into how books were used by their readers. A fascinating, insightful, enjoyable history.
May 14, 2025
Borrowed this book from the school library for my thesis work and it’s so good I bought my own copy. A fabulous account of the reading practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with lots of fun anecdotes. It does not read dry or boring where most academic books do. Best book I’ve read this academic year!
March 28, 2020
A special book that is which is to be read. Based on anecdotes, the “book” has its own social history in the eighteenth century. Every book lover should read this book. After reading he will read every “book” that he will pick up differently. So buy it!!!!!
August 10, 2020
A very interesting dive into the ways books affected society in the 18th-century household. Bringing families together and spreading information as well as lore from place to place. Some of the books mentioned are worth trying to find today.
December 12, 2020
This book is really well researched, but the writing style is such a challenge to get through. So much information packed into really dense paragraphs makes for difficult reading. The best chapter by far was chapter 4. Access to Reading.
August 28, 2024
lots and lots of repetition of behaviours citing people who i've never heard of with details of their life...would have been more interesting to me as an essay on the overall conditions. nice dust jacket and title though.
June 19, 2018
Deliciously eye-opening.
October 24, 2019
THE SOCIAL LIFE. ?
July 11, 2020
Interesting ideas, but not an interesting writing style.
February 21, 2021
There was quite a bit covered in this book, and it was very interesting. I really enjoyed reading excerpts from 18th century commonplace books.
Read
September 17, 2021DNF’d
January 30, 2025
This was a fascinating, brilliantly-researched book!
June 20, 2023
I liked it, but the dry language was challenging to get through
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews