"Reading with a Tender Rapture" examines readers' responses to Donald Grant Mitchell's best-selling sentimental work Reveries of a Bachelor (1850). This article was based upon a chapter in my dissertation, "Bachelors of Arts: Bachelorhood and the Construction of Literary Identity in Antebellum America" (2002). Copyright @ 2003 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Book History, Volume 6, 2003, pages 57-93.