Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel

The many insights of this book's particular readings are fascinating and will doubtless provoke and encourage new work on Tristram Shandy. * Eighteenth-Century Ireland *
Keymer's book, in short, is something of a wonder, a sharply original and consistently eye-opening and provocative rereading of a novel that I thought I knew pretty well ... Keymer opens a substantially new understanding of Sterne as first and foremost an eighteenth-century writer. He has reinstated Sterne as a man of his complicated historical moment. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *
... high standards of insight and originality characterize this book. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *
... steady brilliance and exemplary historical scholarship. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *
Keymer has a wonderful sense of the shape and swing of novelistic production in these decades, and his achievement is to locate Sterne's novel squarely within that field, to trace its targets and to chart its origins and its transformation of those aims and sources. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *
As well as by scholars of Sterne and of mid-eighteenth-century British culture, the study should also be warmly welcomed by readers interested in the early history of the novel; the available scholarship on which tends to cut out at mid-century, with just the occasional, uneasy glance towards Sterne. * The Irish University Review *
With a tremendous sureness of touch, Keymer has produced a substantial contextual analysis which incorporates important new accounts of the contexts themselves: experimental fiction of the 1750s; the early history of serial publication; literary vogues of the 1760s. For the reader familiar with the essays and articles in which he has explored some of these themes over the last decade, not least among the pleasures of Keymer's book is the seamless manner in which it ties together these apparently disparate concerns. * The Irish University Review *
... an impressively detailed, richly illuminating study. * The Irish University Review *
Keymer's own study makes a detailed and compelling case for viewing Tristram within the culture of its 'immediate day', and as a text 'profoundly of its time'. * The Irish University Review *
Keymer resists conclusions; indeed, the ends of his chapters tend to anticipate the next rather than rounding things up. This open-endedness is a manifestation of Keymer's stimulating open-mindedness and quite appropriate for his subject. * Essays in Criticism *
Keymer's treatment of time in the novel is brilliant ... Keymer is to be congratulated on an innovative and engrossing study. * English Studies *
...a gift for beautiful and sharply observant prose, and more than that, a quickness of intelligence that illuminates everything he touches on. * Studies in English Literature *
Keymer deepens our understanding both of the ways in which Sterne's experiments with novelistic resources are grounded in mid-eighteenth-century conventions and tropes and of how Sterne appeals far beyond the eighteenth century to our own absorption in the problems of representation and indeterminacy. In its breadth, elegance, and economy this is exemplary work. * Studies in English Literature *