The period saw a fruitful connection between the literate bourgeoisie (then a minority but growing in social power) and their reading matter. Books remained, however, prohibitively expensive and scarce. Library and cheap reprint systems had yet to evolve.

Those factors created a drive toward what Williams calls, with her favorite epithet, “sociable” consumption. Books were necessarily read aloud to a group. The single copies were typically acquired in quires (sheets) and bound by their owners (invariably male) defining them as personal property, something certified by a pompous “ex libris” bookplate. 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.

Codes of secular decency were promulgated by Joseph Addison in his universally popular “tea table” essays: short and in themselves decent enough for an evening’s listening by mixed male, female and younger audiences. Shakespeare was rigorously clipped, so as not to bring blushes to maiden cheeks.

As any audiotape demonstrates, reading aloud is slow. “Epitomes” and “extract” volumes — especially of verse — were popular. Walter Scott, as a child, was famous for his thrilling infant recitations to groups of admiring adults. As the twig was bent, so the tree was formed. The Wizard of the North never stopped thrilling.

Sociable reading encouraged a premium on elocution. Sociable reading improved the English tongue. And the English pen. Correspondence became more fluent and stylistic over the century. There were virtuosos in the form, like Horace Walpole. (Williams’s book is in a series named after Walpole.) The manuscript diary and personal, commonplace book flourished. Williams has read dozens of them to make her points.

Sociable literacy took a variety of household forms.

Women embroidered poetic maxims into samplers while listening. Recipe books in the kitchen improved the food on the table. Pages from the almanac hung on the kitchen wall reminded the mistress of the household of holy days and holidays. “Servants’ libraries” endeavored to instill moral standards in the lower classes. The drawing room globe was the most instructional furniture in the house — invaluable during a reading aloud of “Robinson Crusoe.” In its little, domestic world, writing civilized the middle-class home.

Williams avoids Jane Austen, on the reasonable ground that a lot has already been done on her. The author of “Pride and Prejudice” wrote privately, covering up her manuscript if anyone came near. She read her finished work to a family audience. What would one not give to be among them?