This paper explores how Ottoman novels, including Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s Felatun Bey and Rak?m Efendi, imagine, depict, and comment upon changing modes of sociability in public and social spaces in the late Ottoman Empire. As one of the most prolific writers in the late Ottoman period, Ahmet Mithat Efendi is known for giving many of his stories and novels a didactic bent, utilizing these mediums to communicate his visions for how his fellow Ottomans should navigate the complexities of modern life. This includes modeling how to navigate the shifting landscape of social venues and the modes of sociability thereto attached, be it public spaces such as theaters, promenades, or outdoor pleasure spots, or private spaces such as gatherings with family and close friends in the home. Understanding Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s model for how to conduct oneself in public and social spaces demands unpacking the way in which he modeled the utilization of new, public social spaces for the performance of a new articulation of morality. We can interpret this articulation as a “secularized,” civic morality which was imagined to be central to the constitution of the identity of the modern Ottoman citizen. Here it is prudent to clarify that what we mean by asserting that this morality has been “secularized” is that this process consists of a re-articulation of the relationship between morality and religion that was dependent on the interiorization of religious moralities. Thus, we are describing the redefinition of the relationship between morality and religion, and not necessarily an anti- or a-religious construction of morality per se. More broadly, this paper explores how authors portray the relationship between the cultural charge to different public and social spaces and the modes of sociability carried out in these spaces. It will be crucial to evaluate how the authors convey the differentiation between different types of social spaces along several key lines of distinction whether it be “public” or “private” or spaces, or whether the cultural charge of a space may be interpreted as “alafranga,” “alaturka” or otherwise.