"Social authorship" -- publication by manuscript transmission, rather than via the printing press -- did not cease with the advent of print or even with the emergent capitalist literary economy of the 18th century. Instead, as Margaret Ezell demonstrates in splendidly researched and presented detail, many writers -- women, folk outside the metropolis, members of various social circles -- continued in the 18th century to eschew print. Perhaps the suprising chapter in this book is Ezell's discussion of "The Very Early Career of Alexander Pope," about Pope's habit of allowing his early poems to mature during several years of manuscript transmission (and revision) before committing them to print. Throughout, however, this is a remarkably readable and illuminating study.