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Notes on the Early Editions of Tristram Shandy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John M. Yoklavich
John M. Yoklavich*
Affiliation:
New Haven, Conn.
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Extract

A. W. Pollard, in his brief bibliographical introduction to the Macmillan two-volume edition of Sterne (1924), has written: “Tristram Shandy is full of surprises, and not the least remarkable of them is the fact that its publication was spread over eight years, thus further accentuating the very leisurely rate of progress of the story itself.” I can attest to many surprises that await the man who looks into the history of the publication of this novel; and these notes—although they solve none of the vexing bibliographical problems—are designed to give a loosening tug to some of these knots. A brief history of the publication of Tristram Shandy runs:

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 1948 , pp. 508 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948

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References

1 Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of Laurence Sterne (London, 1911), i, 206.

2 The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne, 3rd ed. (New Haven, 1929), p. 194.

3 “The First Printer of Tristram Shandy”, PMLA, xlvii (Sept. 1932), 777–89.

4 Wilbur L. Cross, op. cit., p. 76.

5 These three letters are printed in Lewis P. Curtis's edition of the Letters of Laurence Sterne (Oxford, 1935), pp. 74, 80, 85. 6 Lewis Melville, op. cit., p. 206.

7 P M LA, xlvii, pp. 780–1.

8 Letters of Laurence Sterne (Oxford, 193S), p. 80.

9 Menno Hertzberger and Co., Amsterdam, 1935. In this text, especially, are found many illustrations of the three common watermarks that I speak of here.

10 The Library, 4th Ser., xi (1931), 263-99 and 466–98.

11 Ibid., p. 485.

12 W. A. Churchill, op. cit., pp. 43–4.

13 Op. cit., p. 484.

14 PMLA, xlvii, 785.

15 I am also indebted to Professor Chauncey B. Tinker for permission to compare his copies of the first and second editions with later editions in the Sterling Library.

16 A Poem, By R. Dodsley, London: Printed for R. Dodsley at Tally's Head in Pall-mall; and sold by M. Cooper in Pater-noster-Row. MDCCXLII.

17 “Smollett's Works as Printed by William Strahan, with an Unpublished Letter of Smollett to Strahan”, The Library, 4th Ser., xiii (1932), 285.

18 PMLA, xl vu, 788.

19 The text of the agreement is printed in Curtis's article, PMLA, xlvii, 779-80.

20 Wilbur L. Cross, op. cit., p. 600.

21 A. W. Pollard, “Bibliographical Note”, Works of Sterne (New York, 1924), p. vi.