Sleep in Early Modern England by Sasha Handley (review)

This is a timely and important book, timely because "sleep" is in the news (the 2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to research on circadian rhythms, or sleep-wake cycles) and important because we spend about one-third of our lives asleep or trying to get there. It is a thoroughly researched, wide-ranging, and illuminating work that makes one want to try hard to finish it. But that is the trouble. This exhaustive study is also exhausting to read, simply because in many places it is poorly written.

The book's faults I will address later. Its nearly compensating strengths consist in six chapters that evaluate sleep practices from 1660 to 1800, deriving their findings from a variety of sources: primarily 115 estate records from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury dating mostly from 1660 to 1782 and detailing the deceased's sleep-related possessions. Ms. Handley analyzes these data in relation to thousands of additional English household inventories, supplemented with ample scholarship on early modern private life derived from published and unpublished diaries and journals. Her documentation is thorough and fastidious; the Select Bibliography is helpful, although I could not find two authors featured prominently in the text.

The introduction advances two main arguments: first, early modern people took sleep seriously, thinking about it, planning for it, and cultivating it with intense interest. Indeed, sleep during this period came to have "unrivalled importance to the health of body, mind, and soul," an importance reflected "in its daily practice and material dimensions"; second, sleep practices "underwent an extraordinary set of changes from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth." "Sleep's physical causes and effects were fiercely debated in these years as new connections were made between sleep quality and the operation of the brain and nerves." This is a promising start, made especially intriguing by Ms. Handley's aim of focusing on the little-studied "allostatic" process of sleep, or the means by which sleep quality and duration can be controlled environmentally. In other words, this book is a cultural history of sleep as it was understood and sought for during the long eighteenth century.

Chapters 1 and 2 examine the impact of new medical theories about sleep. Whereas earlier notions had associated sleep with the lower body (thanks to the persistence of humoral psychology), after the 1660s "sleep's physiological operation became increasingly focused on the body's upper regions." Sound sleep "became more highly prized than ever," not only for supporting digestion and providing essential refreshment, but also for preserving "human reason." Chapter 3 is the least interesting, its argument being the most familiar: early moderns were a devout lot whose sleep regimens included "central features of Christian practice and identity." They prayed before sleeping, often also in the middle of the night (early modern people apparently slept in two phases divided by an hour or so of wakefulness occupied by prayer, reading, or sex); and some still believed, as their forebears had, that "the Devil's threat reached its peak during the night." Chapter 4 shows how the preoccupation with extending sleep to enhance rational functioning inspired use of sleep-related goods like softer bedding, quieter and more sanitary sleeping chambers, and even color-conscious choice of bedroom textiles (blue and green being widely preferred for their mentally tranquilizing effects).

The best contribution might be Chapter 5, where Ms. Handley unfolds a conflict between people's desire for a rationalized sleep regimen and the lure of "nocturnal sociability" (theaters, salons, gambling locales, moonlit pleasure gardens). When Enlightenment Londoners pursued nighttime enjoyments they ran afoul of their policy of salubrious slumber. "The principal cause of receding bedtimes," she writes, "was "nocturnalization." London acquired its first public streetlights in the 1680s, and "a further 5,000 oil lamps had been installed by 1736." This innovation meant that people could more easily travel about after sunset, which meant they stayed up much later, which meant, in turn, that they had to catch up on sleep...