Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book

Offers new readings of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy by considering its design features alongside broader developments in eighteenth-century book production.

Helen Williams (Author)

9781108842761, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 April 2021

217 pages
15.5 x 23.5 x 2 cm, 0.47 kg

'… all readers will find much in this lucidly arranged, intelligently curated Wunderkammer of antecedents and developments to prompt serious reconsideration of Sterne …' Paul Baines, Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Scrutinising Sterne's fiction through a book history lens, Helen Williams creates novel readings of his work based on meticulous examination of its material and bibliographical conditions. Alongside multiple editions and manuscripts of Sterne's own letters and works, a panorama of interdisciplinary sources are explored, including dance manuals, letter-writing handbooks, newspaper advertisements, medical pamphlets and disposable packaging. For the first time, this wealth of previously overlooked material is critically analysed in relation to the design history of Tristram Shandy, conceptualising the eighteenth-century novel as an artefact that developed in close conjunction with other media. In examining the complex interrelation between a period's literature and the print matter of everyday life, this study sheds new light on Sterne and eighteenth-century literature by re-defining the origins of his work and of the eighteenth-century novel more broadly, whilst introducing readers to diverse print cultural forms and their production histories.

1. Hands
2. The Black Page
3. The Sermon 4. The Marbled Page
5. Footnotes and Catchwords
6. Engraved Lines.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]