The First Printer of Tristram Shandy

Abstract

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.