Implied Shelters argues that the bevy of spatial descriptions in a novel require techniques other than close reading to broach a novel’s theory of habitation. This project proposes a technique called statistically-informed reading to better account for fiction’s many habitable spaces. Implied Shelters uses a hand-annotated dataset that covers all spatial description in Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Charlotte Brontë’s oeuvres. Using summary statistics and new heuristics, the project encourages a shift from reading space for descriptive richness to recognizing subtle-but-transformative patterns in inhabiting space.