The East India Company began to establish lending libraries for soldiers at its stations in India from about 1891 and, by the early 1830s, the majority of those responsible for the day-to-day operation of these institutions were keen to stress their beneficial effect upon the readers who frequented them. In a series of reports that were written at this time station chaplains and commanding officers emphasised that reading was having a positive effect upon the men’s behaviour. What also emerges from these reports is evidence of a contemporary belief that the ‘setting’ in which reading took place determined the degree to which the activity was beneficial.