ABSTRACT
Early in 1735 a couple were sitting either side of their chimney-piece in a smart Dublin house. Their children played around them and a servant fiddled with the window curtains while the parents read.1 The husband, as a bishop of the Church of Ireland, had a duty to expound the Word. He himself wrote tracts and published sermons. He also owned an impressive library: so much so that a brother had remarked to him a few years earlier, ' you formerly wanted books for your room and now you will want room for your books' .2 In turn the bishop, Robert Howard, having inherited assorted law and history books, grumbled, 'a great number of books, unless one hath very convenient room for them, are a greater plague than I ever imagined' .3 Books, then, might be regarded as either plague or blessing. Nevertheless it could not be denied that their possession and uses were important to families, like the Howards, at the heart of the Protestant Interest. Just how print and writing fitted into the lives of the members of that interest, the professionals, graduates, townspeople and landowners, will be explored in this essay.
