Reconsidering a Sternean Attribution: Cambridge University Library's ‘Sterne Volume’

Abstract

Sterneans have long accepted that a six-word annotation scrawled on ‘The Ballyspallan balad’, a manuscript poem found in a collection of Irish pamphlets, ballads, and other items, was penned by Laurence Sterne who, it has been assumed, compiled what is now commonly known as ‘the “Sterne volume”’. This identification, however, principally rests on the flimsy evidence of a one-sentence marginal note provided by the donor of this collection to Cambridge University Library, Henry Bradshaw, who calls it ‘my Sterne vol.’. The authors identify Bradshaw’s ‘Sterne’ not as Laurence, but as John Stearne, Bishop of Clogher, and close friend of Jonathan Swift. Both the probable date of the annotated poem and its connection with the trend for writing ‘Ballyspellan ballads’ places it within Stearne and Swift’s circle.