While not a book for the faint-hearted, Isabel Rivers's study offers an unparalleled guide to the complex relationship between a large swathe of religious opinion in eighteenth-century England and the contemporary literary culture. That religion, philosophy and ethics composed the largest category of books published before about 1750 serves to point up the extraordinary breadth of her familiarity with the subject (publishing interactions with Protestant communities in North American are integrated into the volume throughout). There are three parts to her text. The first considers publishing, distribution and the response of readers to what they read. This was a huge market for publishers: there was money to be made, and trade circulation was crucial. Thus Rivers examines the SPCK's dispersions through subscribing members and Evangelical initiatives such as the Religious Tract Society (1799). The second part, on sources and favourite authors, looks at how earlier works inspired eighteenth-century publications. Readers wanted to hear from such as Watts and Wesley on what should secure their attention and the advice was often eclectic, to include non-Evangelical Anglicans and French mystics, Pascal and Mme Guyon among them. Roman Catholic influences abounded and their devotional guides, suitably modified, were very popular. Another strikingly influential earlier text for a range of readers was Henry Scougal's The life of God in the soul of man. That Scougal's book was a favourite with non-juring Scottish episcopalians could not prevent Wesley, Watts and Doddridge from alike commending it. The third part of the book explores the main literary genres in the culture. Here Rivers highlights the many guides for interpreting the Bible including Henry Venn's detailed instructions, Sarah Trimmer's Sacred history and Doddridge's Family Expositor. All these were conscious of the needs of their followers and ready to use the dynamic publishing market to satisfy them. Other genres treated include sermons, volumes of prayers, diaries and letters, equally likely to sell well with a public ready to buy or borrow them and keen to find out more about the lives and writings of their spiritual leaders. Publishers knew the market and thus the letters of James Hervey and George Whitefield appeared rapidly after their deaths. Hymns and hymnals are fully treated as, in Rivers's words, ‘arguably the most valued component, after the Bible, of the literary culture’ (p. 338) of dissent. Every denomination wanted its own hymn book, even rational dissenters issuing one in 1795. This whole volume is an exceptional achievement based on decades of work: at no point is the author's scholarship ever anything other than solid and reliable. The only minor disappointment is that Isabel Rivers does not offer the reader a more extended conclusion to each chapter. Her final striking estimation is that differences between the Churches were ‘immaterial’ (p. 389) in terms of literary culture but, tantalisingly, she leaves it for other scholars to assess the implications of her claim. It is hardly unfair, given her labours here covering over two hundred writers. And what she has done for dissenters could surely also be done for non-Evangelical Anglicans and for Roman Catholics.