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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (review)

The Folio Society has an illustrious history stretching back to 1947 of producing “carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature.” The emphasis on craft is significant and apt, for in handling a Folio volume a reader cannot escape the significance of the book as a material object. It is appropriate that the Society should produce a new edition of Tristram Shandy, a work famously invested in its own aesthetic value. The Folio edition unites these qualities with the considerable scholarly investment Tristram Shandy has received in terms of editorial and annotative work. It actually consists of two volumes in a hard slip-case: a substantial volume containing the text, and a more slender one, A Commentary. Melvyn New reprises his role as general editor of the monumental Florida edition of Sterne’s works, published in nine volumes from 1978 to 2014, in an “editor’s introduction” which reproduces that to the Penguin Tristram Shandy, first published in 1997. It has not needed “updating,” New comments in a footnote, a testament to “Sterne’s worthiness,” but also to the enduring pertinence of this introduction’s textual history of Tristram Shandy. The Penguin Tristram Shandy was based on the Florida edition, the first two volumes of which, the text (edited by Melvyn New and Joan New), were followed in 1984 by a substantial third volume of extensive editorial annotations by Melvyn New, Richard A. Davies, and W. G. Day. The new Folio edition, like the Penguin, presents a much contracted but nonetheless valuable version of the Florida notes, elucidating Sterne’s text for contemporary readers. The Commentary also reproduces the Penguin’s “Glossary of Terms of Fortification” and “Further Reading,” now updated to reflect more recent work on Sterne. The Commentary opens with a Preface by the indefatigable and ingenious curator of Shandy Hall, Patrick Wildgust, thanks to whom the Laurence Sterne Trust has commissioned considerable Sterne-inspired artwork.