For many eighteenth-century Britons, attending church on Sunday marked the high point of the week. They expected a performance from the man on the pulpit, but unfortunately they were often disappointed. In her diary for September 29, 1785, Lady Eleanor Butler notes, “Went into the Church, heard the Vicar by his snuffling, Lisping, and Vile reading spoil the most awful and Solemn Service.”

Sensing a need, John Trusler, an enterprising Church of England clergyman-turned-publisher, issued The Sublime Reader with careful instructions on how to perform the service, including the advice to keep the sermon “short and plain,” so as not to overtax the listener.

Even better, he published a powerful collection of ready-made sermons for idea-strapped colleagues to resort to in a pinch. To fool eagle-eyed members of the congregation sitting in the church galleries, they were printed with a typeface that looked like handwriting, so that whoever was using them would not get caught cheating.

As Oxford professor Abigail Williams notes in The Social Life of Books, her charming study of the reading habits in “those newly wallpapered” parlors of the lesser gentry, on coming home from church, the head of the household would seek to reinforce the lessons of the day through reading aloud from the scriptures, and the onus was now on him to perform.

“Far from being a dying custom of preliterate communities, reading out loud wellwas at the very center of polite accomplishment,” says Williams. The eighteenth century