This chapter talks about some of the resources primary in several senses for the conduct of book history, 1695-1830, and highlights some archival research projects that most need to be conducted. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge archives, a substantial cache of materials on printing, publishing, financing and distributing printed matter from 1698, are held in the Cambridge University Library. On loan to the same library are the archives of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), dating from 1804, which chiefly provide information on the translation, production and distribution of bibles and, hence, shed light on the BFBS's ongoing engagement with the book trades. Bibliography and book history are increasingly understood as mutually informing modes of historical inquiry. Both are undergoing a period of development that makes this an exciting time to be studying the book.

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) represents the best exemplar of a voluntary organization engaged in the distribution of religious literature for most of the eighteenth century. The changing nature of the SPCK was a feature of broader developments in voluntary religious activity within the British Isles. The most important of these was the growth of evangelical piety and its stress on lay involvement in philanthropy and the improvement of the lives of the poor. A narrow group of evangelicals was similarly prominent in the Church Missionary Society (CMS). By concentrating on overseas missions, especially in areas of recent colonial expansion, the CMS avoided the issue of competition with older societies such as the SPCK. Many of the sponsors of the CMS, however, were soon involved in another venture, the British and Foreign Bible Society. Its rapid success, moreover, helped to change the organization and structure of other voluntary societies during the early nineteenth century.