Tristram Shandy was a sensation--first in England, then through all of Europe--from the time the first two volumes appeared in the winter of 176o. And despite Dr. Johnson's unflattering choice of the book to exemplify his dictum that "nothing odd can last," it maintained its renown (though at times somewhat dubiously) through the nineteenth century, to emerge in our own time as the most modern of eighteenth-century novels.

This edition of "the most modern of eighteenth-century novels" reprints the text of the first edition of the volumes of Tristram Shandy as they appeared from December 1759 to January 1767,including the two illustrations by Hogarth. Obvious errors have been corrected, but most of the conventions of eighteenthcentury printing, and all of Sterne's brilliant exploitations and expansions of these conventions, have been retained.

"Backgrounds" are provided by a chronology of Sterne's life and comments from his letters pertaining to the composition of the novel and his theory of fiction. Responses by Sterne's contemporaries--among them Walpole, Goldsmith, Richardson,and Johnson--begin the selection of critical materials. Earlynineteenth-century assessments by Coleridge, Hazlitt, Scott,and Thackeray are followed by twentieth-century critical essays by Lodwick Hartley, D. W. Jefferson, Toby A. Olshin, Wayne Booth, William Bowman Piper, Martin Price, Jean-Jacques Mayoux, Richard A. Lanham, Sigurd Burkhardt, J. Paul Hunter,Charles Parish, and Howard Anderson.

Preface

Chronology of Sterne's Life

The Text of Tristram Shandy

The Author on the Novel

　To Robert Dodsley

　To a Friend

　To Robert Dodsley

　To Dr. Noah Thomas

　To Jane [?] Fenton

　To Stephen Croft

　To John Hall-Stevenson

　To Lady Anna Dacre [?]

　To Robert Foley

　To Elizabeth Montagu

　To Robert Foley

Criticism

　Contemporary Responses

　　William Kenrick·Review of Tristram Shandy

　　From the Critical Review

　　From the London Magazine

　　From the Royal Female Magazine

　　Horace Walpole·Letter to Sir David Dalrymple

　　Letter to the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure

　　James Boswell·From "A Poetical Epistle"

　　Letter to Lloyd's Evening Post

　　Thomas Gray·Letter to Thomas YVarton the Younger

　　Oliver Goldsmith·From The Citizen of the World

　　Edmund Burke·Review of Tristram Shandy

　　Samuel Richardson·Letter to Mark Hildesley

　　John Langhorne·Review of Tristram Shandy

　　Samuel Johnson·Conversation with Boswell

　Early-Nineteenth-Century Criticism

　　Samuel Taylor Coleridge·[Steme's Wit and Humor]

　　William Hazlitt·[Sterne's Style]

　　Sir Walter Scott·Laurence Sterne

　　William Makepeace Thackeray·Sterne and Goldsmith

　Twentieth-Century Studies

　　Lodwick Hartley·[The Genius of Laurence Sterne]

　　D. W. Jefferson·Tristram Shandy and the Tradition of Learned Wit

　　Toby A. Olshin·Genre and Tristram Shandy:

　　Wayne Booth·Did Sterne Complete Tristram Shandy?

　　William Bowman Piper·Tristram's Digressive Artistry

　　Martin Price·[The Art of the Natural]

　　Jean-Jacques Mayoux·Variations on the Time-Sense in Tristram Shandy

　　Richard A. Lanham·Games, Play, Seriousness

　　Sigurd Burckhardt·Tristram Shandy's Law of Gravity

　　Howard Anderson·Tristram Shandy and the

　　J. Paul Hunter·Response as Reformation:

　　Charles Parish·A Table of Contents for Tristram Shandy

Bibliography