In recent years, the historicity of sleep has come to be widely recognized. This is in large part due to the pathbreaking work of A. Roger Ekirch, who has argued that preindustrial sleep was segmented into first and second sleeps, with an intervening period of wakefulness. The concept of segmented sleep has been eagerly taken up on NPR and in the New Yorker, and it has all but achieved the status of historical truth. However, segmented sleep also lends itself to simplification: once upon a time, everyone slept in roughly the same way, more or less in tune with the rhythms of agrarian life; in the wake of the industrial revolution, sleep was deformed by the overweening and evolving demands of capitalism. In such an account, segmented sleep was both natural and universal, while the ways in which we sleep now are troublingly cultural and even woefully postlapsarian.

Sasha Handley’s Sleep in Early Modern England offers a crucial corrective to such historical simplification. Handley does not disprove the existence of segmented sleep, but instead demonstrates that one particular way of sleeping was neither natural nor universal. Covering roughly the period from 1650 to 1800, Handley charts a number of important changes in the conceptualization and practice of sleep. For example, within the Galenic tradition, sleep was associated with the stomach; it occurred as a byproduct of digestion, when fumes ascending to the brain impeded the passage of the animal spirits. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, patterns of sleeping and waking came to be linked primarily with the brain and nerves. One effect of this is to be found within the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility: “The language of sensibility combined with neurological models of sleep to transform sleep states of all kinds into powerful vehicles of self-expression, self-knowledge and social distinction” (182). To sleep fitfully—or to claim that you did—was to demonstrate your sensitivity. This conception of sleeplessness is radically different from the model of sleep piety that predominated a century earlier. Sleep piety refers to “any sleep-related practice or ritual that … formed part of Christians’ daily efforts to fit their bodies, minds and souls to receive God’s favour” (69). As Handley shows, early modern diarists privilege moderate slumber for reasons that encompass the physical, psychological, spiritual, and moral; they “connected their sleeping habits with their hopes of salvation” (79).

Sleep appears in Handley’s book as primarily a household affair. Handley attends closely and sensitively to the material culture of sleeping chambers, focusing on bedsteads, mattresses, bolsters, linens, and other objects that, in her analysis, might help to induce sleep or to diminish the sense of physical and spiritual vulnerability attendant upon it. She also demonstrates how, over the course of this period, the sleeping chamber moved upstairs. If the actions of a mid-seventeenth-century household were partly organized around practices of sleep piety, the eighteenth-century cult of sociability required a different attitude. The demands and virtues of sociability could trump those of moderation, and “an air of distinction [was conferred] upon erratic bedtimes if they improved knowledge and inspired creativity” (172). Handley also discusses the privileging of sleep, dreams, and the imagination within romantic thought, which thereby positioned itself in contrast not only to Lockean rationalism, but also to an earlier emphasis on pious moderation.

In her conclusion, Handley notes that, when it comes to the history of sleep, there is work still to be done. Her emphasis on (at least reasonably) well-to-do households, which is partly dictated by the availability of sources such as diaries and probate inventories, means certain topics are not considered—for instance, the sleep of the urban homeless or of those who of necessity regularly performed nighttime labor. Additionally, Handley’s fruitful emphasis on the “agency that early modern people exerted over their sleeping and waking habits” (216) means she pays less attention to the ways in which sleep does not respond to such exertions. Finally, Handley could do more to link the history of sleep with that of sexuality, especially when it comes to the topic of bedfellowship. But these are quibbles. Sleep in Early Modern England is a wonderful book. It is beautifully written, exhaustively researched, and consistently fascinating.