 This view held that writing was a superior art to reading within the hierarchical constraints of the era.In 18th-century Europe, the then new practice of reading alone in bed was, for a time, considered dangerous and immoral.As reading became less a communal, oral practice, and more a private, silent one—and as sleeping increasingly moved from communal sleeping areas to individual bedrooms, some raised concern that reading in bed presented various dangers, such as fires caused by bedside candles.