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The First Printer of Tristram Shandy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In an attempt to determine the place of issue of the first edition of the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy the biographer of Laurence Sterne, Governor Wilbur Cross, has denied the traditional belief that the book was printed at York and has written as follows:
All copies of the first edition in two volumes (so far as they have been inspected by the present writer or described by others at first hand) contain on the title-page the title: “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,” a Greek quotation from the Encheiridion of Epictetus, the number of the volume, and the date “1760.” There is nothing more; no place of issue, no name of publisher, no name of author. It is the same for all copies extant, so far as they are known. … The notion which still half obtains that there was an earlier private edition of Tristram Shandy, perhaps bearing on the title-page “York, 1759,” is erroneous. The paper and the typography of the first edition of the first two volumes are essentially the same as those of the third and fourth volumes, which were printed in London the next year for R. and J. Dodsley. It is of course possible, though not probable, that Dodsley, in bringing out the second instalment of the book, matched the paper and the type of a York printer; but the natural inference is that Dodsley, on terms not now known, likewise had the first edition of the first instalment printed in London for Hinxman; that he kept with reluctance a bundle for the London market, and sent the rest down to York, to his former apprentice, who may be regarded as the real publisher of Tristram Shandy, in so far as it had any outside of the author. … The book was quietly placed on sale at York, without any advertisement in the local newspaper until February 12, 1760.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932
References
1 W. L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne (New Haven, 1929), pp. 194–195.
2 Sterne to Dodsley, 23 May 1759. Cf. Unpublished Letters from the Collection of John Wild, First Series, ed. R. N. C. Hunt (London, 1930), pp. 42–44.
3 James Dodsley had lately undertaken the management of his brother's business.
4 Ralph Straus, Robert Dodsley (London, 1910), pp. 261–263.
5 From MS. in the Morgan Library; cf. Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of Laurence Sterne (London, 1911), p. i, 211.
6 London Chronicle (3–6 May, 1760), Numb. 524, p. 435.
7 Hall-Stevenson, Yorick's Sentimental Journey (London, 1769), iii, pp. x–xi; The Gentleman and Lady's Weekly Magazine (Friday, 25 March, 1774), p. 267; The Whitefoord Papers, ed. W. A. S. Hewins (Oxford, 1898), p. 227.
8 Text from MS. in the possession of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach; cf. Cross, Life, p. 208 n. Of the first edition of the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy Governor Cross has remarked (id., p. 193 n): “Neither this nor later instalments of Tristram Shandy were entered at Stationers' Hall, though we find Sterne subsequently disposing of his copyrights.”
9 York Courant (Tuesday, 12 Feb. 1760), Numb. 1790 [p. 3]. Office of the Yorkshire Herald, York.
10 The Greek characters used here are those of the first edition. Students will notice that the type employed by Dodsley in the second edition differs with regard to the theta in 
and the gamma in 
. Cross prints a facsimile of Dodsley's title-page in Life, p. 601.
11 London Chronicle (29 Dec.-1 Jan. 1760), Numb. 469, p. 5; cf. Public Advertiser (1 Jan. 1760), Numb. 7828 [p. 4].
12 Ralph Straus, Robert Dodsley (London, 1910), p. 260.
13 Works of Laurence Sterne (Oxford, 1926–7), Tristram Shandy, i, Bk. i, chap, ix, p. 15.
14 Thomas P. Cooper, Literary Associations of the City of York (York, n.d.), p. 19.
15 Curtis, The Politicks of Laurence Sterne (London, 1929), pp. 36–37.
16 Robert Davies, A Memoir of the York Press (Westminster, 1868), pp. 256, 262; cf. Curtis, The Printer of Sterne's Political Romance, Times Literary Supplement (London, 28 Feb., 1929), p. 163.
17 Davies, Memoir of the York Press, p. 262 and note.
18 Straus, Robert Dodsley, p. 368.
19 Public Advertiser (Wednesday, 2 Apr., 1760), Numb. 7918 [p. 1].
20 For confirmation of this fact I am indebted to Mr. Harold Murdoch, of the Harvard University Press, in whose notable collection of Sterne a copy of this book reposes.
21 Denne, “Observations on Paper-Marks,” Archaeologia (London, 1796), xii, p. 121.
22 Posthumous Works of a late Celebrated Genius (London, 1770), i, 180 and note.
23 For permission to compare these several volumes in their collections I am indebted to Professor Chauncey B. Tinker and to Professor Andrew Keogh, librarian of the Yale University Library and of the Elizabethan Club of Yale.
24 I have detected this watermark in paper used by Steme and again in the Fauconberg Rentual 1755–1771, a manuscript in my possession. May one suppose a Yorkshire origin for this paper?
25 Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1927), p. 82.
26 I have to thank for their assistance Mr. R. F. Sharp and Mr. W. A. Marsden, of the British Museum.
27 R. W. Chapman, “Notes on Eighteenth-Century Bookbuilding,” The Library, 4th Series, iv, p. 169.
28 McKerrow, op. cit., p. 68.