309 who protected her in France, who enriched the estates of his family, and secured sinecures and promotion— possibly even a rich wife—for Rochester himself in his first years at Court.’’Royal preferment, however, came sporadically and often not at all, and thus we have the anger that fed Rochester’s escapades and his verse. Mr. Johnson illuminates well-known conundrums. The enigmatic fragment entitled ‘‘Sab: Lost’’ almost surely arose from a collaboration between Rochester and Lee on The Tragedy of Nero. David Vieth intuited that ‘‘A Ramble in St. James’s Parke’’ is ‘‘a crucial work biographically .’’ Mr. Johnson shows that it is, the poem in part arising from Rochester ’s fury at discovering ‘‘that his mistress , Foster, had been betraying him with others and that she had passed on more deadly forms of the pox to him.’’ Mr. Johnson also corroborates Love’s insight that ‘‘During the period that produced [Rochester’s] most important writing, he was a client and political follower of George Villiers . . . with his primary audience found among Buckingham ’s entourage.’’ As Mr. Johnson concludes: ‘‘The extent of Buckingham ’s influence on John Wilmot would be difficult to estimate, in matters moral, philosophical, political, and literary.’’ Some will question Mr. Johnson’s attempts ‘‘to ‘psychoanalyze’a man of distant time and place.’’ The effort, however , is worthwhile because of ‘‘the obsession with varieties of sexuality’’ in Rochester’s life and writings. Mr. Johnson also thinks a number of disputed works to be Rochester’s, devoting a chapter, for example, to the evidence that Rochester authored the earliest three-act version of Sodom and Gomorah, and that he probably collaborated in the five-act version written in 1676–1677. Some of Mr. Johnson’s speculations will draw fire, but informed as they are by what is known, they have the ring of plausibility. Vieth, whose pioneering edition has served as our best biographical account, felt that given the historical gaps, the disputed canon, and a life that often ‘‘gives the electrifying impression of being in contact with both myth and reality,’’ no ‘‘definitive biography’’ would ever be forthcoming. Mr. Johnson’s comes as close as we are likely to have, and scholars will draw upon this engagingly written work for years. Larry Carver University of Texas at Austin LAURENCE STERNE. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Robert Folkenflik. New York: Modern Library, 2004. Pp. 665. $10.95. An authoritative and readable paperback edition of Tristram Shandy has been a philosopher’s stone for Sterne scholars for over sixty years. James Work’s 1940 effort led to readable but highly imitative editions by Howard Anderson and Ian Campbell Ross in the 1980s. It was not until 2000, when Penguin published Melvyn New’s adaptation of his own authoritative Florida Edition , that a solid and inexpensive text was available for classroom use. The Modern Library edition of Tristram Shandy, appearing only a year after Penguin ’s reissue of the title in a more reader -friendly format, would therefore seem something of a gamble. Yet Mr. Folkenflik ’s edition stands as a viable option to the Penguin. The establishment of a correct text is especially vexing for Tristram Shandy. The Modern Library edition uses the meticulously selected (in cooperation with 310 the peerless Sterne bibliographer, Kenneth Monkman), collated, and prepared text of Sterne’s work from the Florida Edition; it is, of course, the text used in the Penguin edition as well. Mr. Folkenflik’s fluid and concise apparatus throughout this edition lightens the heft of Tristram Shandy without shortchanging its depth. A brief overview blends thumbnail biography with a critical sketch that draws an intuitive line between Sterne, Woolf, and Kundera; unfortunately, as W. G. Day points out, this is a carryover from the Penguin archives . The substantial Introduction effectively summarizes and contextualizes the highlights of recent scholarship, satisfying the needs of both general readers and undergraduates. The Introduction properly grounds this often mischaracterized work within the generic conventions of learned wit and the novel. Mr. Folkenflik’s critical summary moves past fashionable interpretations to unexpected but original and pleasing conclusions, such as the suggestion that Tristram Shandy ‘‘is not a stream-of-consciousness...