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Work: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. James A. Work (New York: Odyssey Press, 1940).

VOL. I

FRONTISPIECE

Fulfilling Sterne’s request through the mediation of a friend for “The loosest Sketch in Nature, of Trim’s reading the Sermon to my Father” (Letters, 99), William Hogarth designed this plate for the second edition and one for the first edition of volume IV, both engraved by Simon François Ravenet the elder (d. 1774), one of the best book illustrators of the period and a favorite of Hogarth’s. He usually styled himself S. F. Ravenet. See Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (London: The Print Room, 1989), 192–93. The second state of this illustration adds the clock in the background and Trim’s hat in the foreground (Paulson, 431).

TITLE PAGE

TRISTRAM SHANDY: Sir Tristram, an Arthurian knight, was named for his “sorrowful birth,” which killed his mother, Elizabeth (the name of Tristram Shandy’s mother). Common meanings of “shandy” were “crack-brained” (a Yorkshire usage) and “wild” (also a northern England usage). As in the case of Tobias Smollett’s earlier Roderick Random and Ferdinand Fathom, a romance given name is undercut by a comic family name.

EPIGRAPH

1. …: “Men are tormented with the Opinions they have of Things, and not by the Things themselves.” From Encheiridion (Manual) of the Stoic Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135) as translated by Michel de Montaigne (1.40; 1:285).

2. 1760: actually published in December 1759 by Ann Ward in York. As was common in the book trade, publication in the last few months of the year anticipated the date of the coming year to make vols. I and II seem newer in the months to come. The second edition would be published by R. and J. Dodsley in London in April 1760.

DEDICATION

1. This dedication to William Pitt (1708–78), added to the second edition, appeared in 1760. In the wake of a string of victories in 1759, Pitt, later first earl of Chatham (see the dedication to volume IX), was immensely popular for his conduct of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63).

2. bye corner: Sterne was vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, north of York, from August 1738. The letter Sterne wrote to Pitt requesting permission to dedicate was sent from London (Letters, 103).

3. ill health: Sterne’s consumption (tuberculosis) would lead to his death eight years later.

CHAP. I

1. humours and dispositions … then uppermost: Derived from astrology in classical antiquity, the “humors,” sometimes used synonymously with “animal spirits,” are the liquids that comprise one’s “complexion” or constitution (blood, phlegm, choler, melancholy). “Dispositions” here refers to the state of the stars and constellations. The term “animal spirits,” though very common and understood as a fluid of the nerves emanating from the brain and enabling motion and feeling, here comes from John Locke, whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding Tristram immediately parodies: “Custom settles habits of thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in the body; all which seems to be but trains of motion in the animal spirits, which once set a going, continue in the same steps they have been used to, which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and, as it were, natural” (2.33.6). Sterne seems as aware as deconstructionists that Locke, who critiques the use of metaphor, is an inveterate user of metaphor himself. For further discussion of “animal spirits” see II, iii, n. 12; II, xix, n. 15; and IV, xix, n. 4 below.

2. Believe me, good folks: Sterne had used this phrase, partly cancelled, in Fragment, 1088.

3. hey-go-mad: Although the OED cites Sterne as the first entry for this “phrase expressive of boisterous excitement,” William King refers to “Dancing to the Tune of Hey-go-mad” much earlier in The Northern Atlantis, or, York Spy (London, 1713), 54. Sterne uses the term metaphorically. See D. W. Patrick, “Gastripheres, Mundungus, and the Hey-go-mad,” The Shandean 12 (2001), 119–23.

4. wind up the clock: Having parodied Locke, Sterne