Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 3
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
April 2021
Print publication year:
2021
Online ISBN:
9781108904162

Book description

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.

Reviews

‘In Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book, Helen Williams has written a careful, scholarly study of lasting value about Sterne as a book designer. No one has yet attempted so thorough and meticulous a study of Sterne's 'graphic and typographic ingenuity'. His audacious blank, black and marbled pages are placed in the context of other printed design materials -'print sources beyond the novel'. What Thomas Keymer did for Tristram Shandy's context of writing-identifying the antecedents for what seems'post-modern' in Tristram's floating world-Williams has done for the physical design of first editions of the book.’

Source: TLS Reviews

‘… written as a clear work of scholarship with all that that implies in language … Recommended.’

R. Stone Source: Choice Magazine

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

Paul Baines Source: Eighteenth-Century Fiction

‘… a substantial and insightful study, which takes us significantly beyond previous discussions of Sterne’s relationship to the book as material and visual artefact.’

Shaun Regan Source: Modern Language Review

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.