Selected Bibliography:
Laurence Sterne
(1713-1768)

By Martha F. Bowden,
Kennesaw State University

Last revised 16 July 1999

Bibliographies

• Francesco Cordasco, Laurence Sterne: A List of Critical Studies Published from 1896 to 1946 (Brooklyn: Long Island Univ. Press, 1948). Reprinted in Francesco Cordasco, Eighteenth Century Bibliographies, Handlists of Critical Studies Relating to Smollett, Richardson, Sterne, Fielding, Dibdin, 18th Century Medicine, the 18th Century Novel, Godwin, Gibbon, Young, and Burke (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1970). Largely superseded by Hartley, who covers nearly all its territory more thoroughly. Its only immediate value is in cataloguing items that appeared between 1896 and 1900.
• Lodwick Charles Hartley, Laurence Sterne in the Twentieth Century: An Essay and a Bibliography of Sternean Studies, 1900-1965 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1966).
• Lodwick Charles Hartley, Laurence Sterne, 1965-1977: An Annotated Bibliography: With an Introductory Essay-Review of the Scholarship (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978). These two items constitute the most thorough bibliography of Sterne studies in the first three quarters of the twentieth century.
• Alain Bony, "Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: Bibliographie selective et critique," Bulletin de la Societé d'Etudes Anglo-Americaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles 17 (1983): 35-64. Bony helps to update the Hartley bibliographies.

Editions

• Collected Works

  • The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne (Gainesville, Florida: The University Press of Florida, 1978-) (in progress):
    • Vols 1 and 2: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Melvyn New and Joan New (1978).
    • Vol. 3: Notes to The Life and Opinions, by Melvyn New, with Richard A Davies and W.G. Day (1984).
    • Vol. 4: The Sermons of Laurence Sterne, ed. Melvyn New (1996).
    • Vol. 5: Notes to The Sermons of Laurence Sterne, by Melvyn New (1996).
    • Forthcoming: A Sentimental Journey into France and Italy and The Journal to Eliza (ed. Melvyn New).
    
    This edition supersedes all previous editions.
  
  

• Individual Works

  • Tristram Shandy

    The list below refers to editions which I have used extensively for teaching and research. It does not include the Riverside Edition, which I used a long time ago and which has textual problems, nor the Norton Critical Edition, which is also lacking textually. All students of Sterne should leap at any opportunity to examine the original editions (1759-1767) to get a true picture of the work which caused such a sensation in its day. No reproduction can produce an effective illustration of the marbled page's beauty, or the black page's inky darkness.
    
    
    • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. James A. Work (New York: Odyssey Press, 1940). My personal favorite continues to be Work's edition. First published in 1940 and available for more than forty years afterward, it is unfortunately no longer in print; keep an eye out for it in the used bookstores.
    • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Melvyn New and Joan New; Introductory Essay by Christopher Ricks; introduction and notes by Melvyn New (New York: Penguin Books, 1997). Based on the text and notes of the Florida Edition, the Penguin also contains reproductions of both the Hogarth editions, a real plus.
    • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Ian Campbell Ross. Oxford World's Classics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, 1992). Nice readable text, but no Hogarth reproductions.
    
    

  • A Sentimental Journey and other texts

    • A Sentimental Journey, ed. Graham Petrie and intro. A. Alvarez (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).
    • A Sentimental Journey, The Journal to Eliza, and A Political Romance, ed. Ian Jack, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968, 1984). Particularly useful to have A Political Romance, because it is hard to find.
  
  

Biographies

• Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne: The Early and Middle Years (London: Methuen, 1975).
• Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne: The Later Years (London and New York: Methuen, 1986).
• Wilbur L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne, 3rd ed. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1929; reissued, 1967).

Correspondence

• Letters of Laurence Sterne, ed. Lewis Perry Curtis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935, 1967). Contains The Journal to Eliza and the visitation return of 1743, illustrations, and extensive notes.

Criticism

• Journal

  • The Shandean: An Annual Volume Devoted to Laurence Sterne and His Works, published by the Laurence Sterne Trust, Peter J. De Voogd, general editor (1989-).
  
  

• Books

  • James Downey, The Eighteenth-Century Pulpit: A Study of the Sermons of Butler, Berkeley, Secker, Sterne, Whitefield and Wesley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). Sets Sterne in the context of his contemporaries, and covers and a broad denominational range.
  • Alan B. Howes, Sterne: The Critical Heritage (London, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974). A resource for investigating the reactions to Sterne's writing, from his day to our own.
  • Elizabeth Kraft, Laurence Sterne Revisited, Twayne's English Authors Series No. 532 (New York: Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996). An excellent introduction to the complete corpus of Sterne's work, including the sermons; the charts in the discussion of Tristram Shandy are fun. Very useful bibliography.
  • Sterneiana, 5 vols. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1974-75). Facsimile reprints of mostly anonymous responses to Sterne, including imitations and continuations of his work. An interesting slice of literary history, which convinced me, at least, that Sterne is inimitable.
  • Jonathan Lamb, Sterne's Fiction and the Double Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989). A challenging and rewarding read, which investigates the use of doubled images in Sterne, and the resulting instability of meaning in the text.
  • James E. Swearingen, Reflexivity in Tristram Shandy: An Essay in Phenomenological Criticism (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1977). An interesting combination of literature and philosophy, and an unusually sympathetic approach to Mrs. Shandy (especially for 1977).
  
  

Electronic

• http://www.let.ruu.nl/~Peter.deVoogd/shandean/sitemap2.html. This Web site, run by the editor of The Shandean, includes complete tables of contents for all the volumes of The Shandean and on-line purchase of the journal, which is otherwise hard to come by in America. It also contains pages devoted to Shandy Hall, with images of the house, inside and out, and the gardens; illustrations from the 18th and 19th centuries of Sterne's texts; and information about the Laurence Sterne Trust.

For Fun: Tristram Shandy the Comic Book

• Martin Rowson, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1996). A story of a cock and a bull, and the best of its kind I ever heard.

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