Adaptations of Laurence Sterne's Fiction: Sterneana, 1760–1840

Exploring how readers received and responded to literary works in the long eighteenth century, M-C. Newbould focuses on the role played by Laurence Sterne’s fiction and its adaptations. Literary adaptation flourished throughout the eighteenth century, encouraging an interactive relationship between writers, readers, and artists when well-known works were transformed into new forms across a variety of media. Laurence Sterne offers a particularly dynamic subject: the immense interest provoked by The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy inspired an unrivalled number and range of adaptations from their initial publication onwards. In placing her examination of Sterneana within the context of its production, Newbould demonstrates how literary adaptation operates across generic and formal boundaries. She breaks new ground by bringing together several potentially disparate aspects of Sterneana belonging to areas of literary studies that include drama, music, travel writing, sentimental fiction and the visual. Her study is a vital resource for Sterne scholars and for readers generally interested in cultural productivity in this period.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Making noise: Sterneana and adaptation; Sentimental journeys?: adaptations of Sterne’s travel narratives; Elegant extracts or fungous productions?: Sterneana and sentimental fiction; ’Forth from the closet to the improving stage’?: Sterneana on stage and page; ’A illustration to the mind’s eye’: Sterneana and the visual; (In)conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Mary-Céline Newbould is a Director of Studies and Supervisor in English at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Bye-Fellow of Newnham College, UK.

Review :
"An extensive thirty-page bibliography and a very useful representative chronology of nearly three hundred Sterneana created between 1760 and 1840 concludes this essential study of an important phenomenon." - SHARP News "She is (…) doing a service with the sheer breadth of her inquiry. With (I presume) the aid of full-text databases, she has discovered Sternean moments and allusions in places no previous scholar thought to even look, and has brought together genres and media often treated in isolation: travel writing, collections of excerpts, sentimental fiction, drama, songs, satirical prints, etc. And many of her comments on individual texts and images (…) are insightful." – David A. Bewer, The Ohio State University