This paper re-treads some of the shared terrain of literature, history and science scholarship of the past generation. Lit & sci studies – at least those in the UK – are increasingly historicist in character, so much so that they are at times indistinguishable from historiography. At the same time, historians of science have discovered the history of the book, a move which may be argued to be only apparently complementary. Meanwhile, amongst historians themselves, there has been considerable recent debate about the relationship between social and cultural history, both of which bid fair to be the animating force of the scientific historicism with which literary critics tangle. By making visible some of the ‘pencil workings’ in historiography itself, I hope to encourage literature critics to stand their ground: not to get swept away on the tide of historicism. Finally, I offer a concept of the constrained reader as a way to steer between literature and history.