Literary history has been dogged until now by the absence of a genuine history of the reader. Despite recent work in this area (Manguel, Cavallo/Chartier), the exploration of the history of reading still tends to be hindered by a split described by Jon Clancher, one which disconnects textual constructions of readership (the implied reader) from empirical issues of audience constitution and reading habits. This article aims to contribute to a new materialist history of reading by mapping out an area where these two issues intersect, namely, that of the English eighteenth century. At this period, the explosive expansion of the publishing industry was accompanied by a corresponding rise in the number of readers. As a consequence, the proximity and immediacy of the author-reader relationship was lost, a problem that manifestly preoccupied writers of the day. The article goes on the explore the textual strategies employed by three eighteenth-century writers (Fielding, Sterne, Richardson) to deal with this abruptly experienced remoteness and anonymity of the reader, thus unifying the textual and empirical aspects of reader-history so frequently dealt with in isolation.