Library Research Visits

January 2023

The British Library, London

I spent one week at the British Library in London, working through original copies of eighteenth-century newspapers and magazines. The British Library’s holdings of these materials are vast, and it’s easy to lose time working out what’s what. So, to make maximum use of my time there I compiled in advance an outline bibliography of the materials I wanted to consult, and placed advance requests at the Rare Books & Music Reading Room. Many of these materials are extremely fragile, and held in special collections that require close supervision by library staff and careful handling by the reader, so advance requests help to minimise delays in the delivery of requested material.

A group of buildings, of red brick, with a brick forecourt. The buildings rise towards the sky in the background. To the left is a bronze statue of a man. He is crouching towards the ground.

The British Library (Photograph Public Domain)

I mainly focused on two main clusters of texts: The Grand Magazine, published in 1760, which includes numerous important Sterne-related items, among them reviews of his work and examples of Sterneana. Some of this material is available digitally, but most of it is not: being able to work through monthly instalments of this magazine, in its paper format, allowed me to read material I had not previously been able to access, and also gave me a sense of the magazine’s identity as a whole: its mixture of contents, layout, page size, and typographic features.

Getting this first-hand sense of research materials is really important for working in the field of ephemeral news print: digital versions, especially when navigated via search terms, can mean we miss the surrounding contexts in which an item of interest appears. Seeing the position of where a Sterne-related item appeared within an individual issue of The Grand Magazine, and what other items surround it, gives an important sense of how the original readers will have come into contact with ‘Sterne’ in this context.

The significance of handling primary material is as important, if not more so, when it comes to newspapers. They tended to have a more eclectic range of contents and organisation than magazines, which tended to be more carefully put together and published, partly due to the comparative lesser frequency of their appearance, often as monthly instalments. The vast majority of newspapers appeared as dailies or weeklies, requiring a fast turnaround, which made their composition and contents both much more immediate – pertaining to the issues of the day – and also more hastily assembled in some circumstances.

The Grand Magazine, June (1760), British Library (author’s photograph)

The types of information newspapers conveyed was also much more diverse: news items, advertisements, miscellaneous events, theatre bills, notices of public events, and literary snippets all featured, in varying forms and guises depending on the outlook and intendedreadership of the newspaper. This creates a complementary, but very different context in which Sterne and Sterneana circulated.

At the British Library, rather than working through a single publication title, as I had done with The Grand Magazine, instead I worked through large folios comprising multiple different newspaper titles, from different years, belonging to the vast Burney Collection of newspapers held at the British Library. Again, this has been digitised, but again, working through the large-scale format of these newspapers first hand gave a wonderful sense of where a Sterne related item appeared, what surrounded it, and how early readers would have confronted it. As with the magazines – under a different type of editorial control – coming across a Sternean fragment in a newspaper raises questions about editorship and the printing processes involved in these ephemeral publications.

A small excerpt from a printed newspaper text. The type is small, set in a single column. There is a title, centred, in capital letters. There is a small square to the top left of the text column, with a picture. It shows a man riding a horse. In the background there is a sea, with a large ship on the horizon.

Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 12 October 1781

At the British Library, I looked at original copies of the London-produced Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser from the 1770s and 1780s, from the London paper the Public Ledger, and from the Dublin Mercury of the 1770s. I came across a few items that had hitherto not been discovered. My coverage, in terms of chronology or the full print runs of any of these titles, was far from comprehensive, but it gave me a great sense of the diversity and the geographical spread of Sterne and Sterneana in the newspaper. I added all my findings to my running bibliography and chronological list of items.

A small excerpt from a printed newspaper text. The type is small, set in a single column. There is a title, centred, in capital letters.

Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 31 January 1783

I also took the opportunity to consult some rare book materials held off-site, which I ordered in: Leonard MacNally’s Sentimental Excursions to Windsor and other Places (1781) was first published in serialised instalments in London-based magazines, so comparing the first two editions of this work with their earlier printed format was an invaluable part of building up the bigger picture of how networks of print functioned in this period.

Staying in London, right next to the British Library, enabled me to make the most of my research time there, with full days spent mostly in the Rare Books & Music room.

The Laurence Sterne Trust, Shandy Hall, Coxwold

I spent a few days in Yorkshire, working in the very different research environment of the main museum dedicated to Laurence Sterne, at his former home in the small Yorkshire village of Coxwold.

The Laurence Sterne Trust’s unique collection of Sterne-related materials includes many rare regional newspapers, which are still in the process of being catalogued. Many are extremely fragile and under close conservation scrutiny, and several are not present in digital repositories.

I worked through the items available for me to look at, including issues of provincial newspapers The York Courant and The Newcastle Courant, from the 1760s to the 1790s. My findings confirmed my existing thesis concerning the geographical spread of Sterne-related items, within and beyond London, with the same items appearing across the British Isles – especially advertisements. As the Trust is still working through the organisation of this material, my follow-up trip to Shandy Hall will doubtless reveal new research findings once that material is made available.

A stone wall, with the edge of an archway to the right. Sunlight is visible through the archway. To the left, on the wall, there is a stone slab mounted. There is writing on the slab.

Sterne’s headstone, St Michael’s Church, Coxwold, Yorkshire

The church at which Sterne preached, St Michael’s, is a short walk from Shandy Hall, and provides magnificent views across the Yorkshire countryside.

The side of a building to the left, in golden sunshine. To the right of the building there is a grassy slope, with several stone headstones at random intervals. The sky in the background is very blue. There are trees against the horizon.

A landscape, with a grassy slope and hills in the distance. There are several trees in the foreground and in the distance. There are many headstones, of different shapes and sizes, stretching across the grass. There is a pale sunshine; it lights on the grass, which is frosted over.

Churchyard, St Michael’s Church, Coxwold, Yorkshire

April 2023

La Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris

In April 2023 I spent a week investigating newspaper and magazine collections at the BnF, moving between the library’s three major sites: François-Mitterrand, Arsenal, and Richelieu. I consulted a range of collections at each site, The François-Mitterrand site holds numerous newspapers and some magazines. I focussed mainly on the holdings at l’Arsenal, which are most immediately relevant to my project.

A heavy, grey sky, with sunshine barely visible through the clouds. There are large, square buildings on the horizon. There is a bridge, of wooden slats and metal handrails, in the foreground, and leading towards the buildings.

La bibliothèque nationale (BnF), François Mittérand site, Paris

At Arsenal, I looked at numbers of established revues, including the Journal des Beaux Arts et des Sciences, and La Renommée Littéraire, and of more idiosyncratic publications, which revealed the breadth and range of periodical publications in the later eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth century.

A large, square, stone building, with several windows, and two flags above a decorative central entrance. There is a large, wooden door with glass panels. The sky is dark and grey. There is a tree to the right of the building.

La bibliothèque nationale (BnF), Arsenal site, Paris

Among them, Calypso; ou les Babillards (1784), and its sequel, Les Babillards. Created by James Rutledge, among others, this revue demonstrates the investment in wide-ranging subjects of the day among an intellectual group of authors and their readership, and the good-humoured clubbability with which they communicated their opinions.

Rutledge was the author of a book publication item of Sterneana, La Quinzaine Angloise à Paris, ou l’Art de s’y ruiner en peu de temps (1776), which parodies Sterne’s humoristic style. So, it was very gratifying to see another crossover between these areas of Sterneana in the network of book and magazine publications. A large, square, stone building, with several windows, and two flags above a decorative central entrance. There is a large, wooden door with glass panels. The sky is dark and grey. There is a tree to the right of the building.

Calyspo ; ou, les Babillards (Paris, 1784), BnF (Arsenal) (author’s photograph)

The BnF also holds full runs of the Journal de Paris, an important and influential daily newspaper, which ran from 1777 to 1840. It contains numerous reviews of Sterne’s works, advertisements pertaining to them, allusions to the author, and parodies of his style – both satirically comic and sentimental. I was able to consult

some issues on site, and also online, as part of Gallica’s extensive digitisation programme. The fruits of these researches have resulted in an article (written in French) to be published in the revue, Europe, in a special feature on Sterne guest edited by Alexis Tadié.

A single page of printed text. There is a large title in capital letters. Beneath the title there are smaller lines of print. There is a rectangular table with a heavy black border in the centre of the image. Below the rectangle there are two parallel columns of closely printed text.

Journal de Paris, 9 March 1786 (Gallica)

January 2024

Library Research Trip
The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 6-10 January 2024

The Bodleian is one of the UK’s major research libraries, and holds extensive collections of historic materials. Its newspaper and magazine collections offer the potential to fill gaps in the generally comprehensive collections held by the British Library and available via online resources. The British Library’s print runs of newspapers, in particular, are not always complete – with daily printed papers, holding a full print run for a single title across all its years is a near impossibility. Consequently, some digital resources based on specific collections will not hold full print runs either.
My aim at the Bodleian was two-fold. Firstly, to examine in detail physical copies of issues for a single newspaper title that I had so far only be able to consult in piecemeal form: The Public Advertiser, a major eighteenth-century daily newspaper. The two years I consulted were for 1779 and 1780, with the intention of setting the wider contexts for the initiation of a serialised Sternean imitation, Lenoard MacNally’s ‘A Sentimental Excursion to Windsor’, which was to take book form as Sentimental Excursions to Windsor, and Other Places in 1781. This text was first published in instalments in The Public Advertiser, which were later reprinted in The Morning Herald. This serialised journey narrative provides an important cornerstone of my examination of longer items of Sterneana printed in newspapers and magazines in instalment format.

My second main aim was to situated Sterne-specific items within the wider contexts of their initial appearance and reception, and to grasp more fully the diversity of information and materials available to eighteenth-century readers of these ephemeral publications. Reading through every issue of these two years of The Public Advertiser revealed the eclecticism of day-to-day life as recorded and catalysed by the paper during 1779 and 1780. Major international and national events sit alongside more minor domestic concerns: the death and funeral of major eighteenth-century actor David Garrick, whose funeral procession is illustrated diagrammatically in the February 1779 issue of The Public Advertiser, shares column space with lost-and-found notices for anything ranging from purses, to children, to pet dogs. One-off news notices run alongside regular features, including letters to the paper penned by a colourful array of pseudonymous contributors, and fictional items, such as poems and short stories. Advertisements inevitably fill much column space, and remind us of the bustling commercialism of later eighteenth-century London – and Britain, with cities beyond the capital frequently brought into the remit of advertisements.

Consulting a physical newspaper copy in this way therefore provides a vital component of the experience of investigating print titles from the press, complementing but also fundamentally different from the more focused searches digital resources allow. I was nevertheless able to spend some time exploring some avenues via digital archives available to Bodleian Library readers, to establish the groundwork for a further area of the Sterne project: his significance to anti-slavery campaigns as manifested in the reproduction and adaptation of elements of his fiction in British and American newspapers, in particular his own pronouncements against slavery in both Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey, and his brief correspondence with writer, artist, and former slave Ignatius Sancho.

Other items of interest that I consulted included a very rare musical score for a setting of a sung performed by Mrs Kennedy in Lenoard MacNally’s dramatic adaptation of Tristram Shandy, first performed at Covent Garden in 1783. The lyrics were set to music by popular eighteenth-century composer Michael Arne.

There is a large oblong building made of gold-coloured stone across the centre of the image. In the foreground there is an open square, with several people walking across it in different directions.

The Old Library, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.