Sterne Digital Library

How we think about literary history has typically been shaped by what we think the 'important' books are, and who wrote them. Although scholars have sought to challenge ideas of canonicity by asserting the place of 'lesser' works - those produced by marginal groups, for instance, or which do not make significant claims on what we deem to be 'good' literature - these recuperations have often been positioned in opposition to so-called canonical works. A more revealing approach to how literary cultures have flourished in the past can be shaped by considering the symbiotic relations between apparently 'important' and 'lesser' works as realised through the dynamic processes of adaptation. Creatively recycling a popular text into new forms, media and modes (the visual, performance, material culture) invigorates the inherent connections and differences between the marginal and the central in stimulating new ways.
The processes of literary adaptation are deep-rooted and hold many significant literary examples, from Philip Sidney to J.K. Rowling. Yet eighteenth-century readers exuberantly refashioned texts into alternative artistic forms against the back-drop of an emergent celebrity culture and a rapidly expanding book trade. Popular works in this period enjoyed a lively, reciprocal relationship with the adaptations they inspired. Texts became substance for public consumption and regurgitation in new forms, as readers turned creators by producing their own versions of famous works.
Laurence Sterne (1713-68) was one of the most popular and successful writers of his day. His idiosyncratic novels, 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' (1759-67) and 'A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy' (1768), were wildly successful and inspired a host of 'Sterneana': creative responses in word, image, and performance. Whilst other popular texts from this period inspired creativity, none experienced adaptation as prolific or diverse as Sterne's.
Sterne's first readers found his fiction to be strikingly 'novel' in every sense, from 'Tristram Shandy's' erratic story-telling, playful typography, and bawdry, to 'A Sentimental Journey's' ambiguous mixture of erotic humour and touching pathos. Both novels generated sequels, imitations, continuations, song, drama, and visual and material culture at home and abroad; 'Tableau Sentimental de la France' by 'Yoryck' (1792), for instance, uses Sterne's sympathetic traveller to critique post-Revolutionary France. Sterne continues to fascinate readers: his books have never gone out of print; there is a steady flow of visitors to his home, Shandy Hall; artists, writers, and musicians still produce their own creative interpretations of his idiosyncratic works. Experimental visual representation of narrative was pioneered by Sterne and abounds in Sterneana. The SDL will be the first digital resource to experiment with digitally encoding visual narrative like engraved lines, white space and non-verbal typographic marks.
The main aim of this project is to use 'Sterneana' as a case study for examining the dynamic culture of eighteenth-century adaptation. Its objectives are to create the Sterne Digital Library, a digital resource combining Sterne's fiction with lesser-known and hitherto marginalised Sterneana, allowing users to search across them and identify their synergies and explore the wider implications afterlives hold in literary culture. It will be illuminated by explanatory texts compiled by world-leading scholars which introduce, elucidate, and encourage new routes towards exploring it. Hosted on Cambridge Digital Library, an open-access platform, it will bring new audiences to treasures of Cambridge University Library (CUL) and the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall (LST) that are unmatched in number or scope.

The design and creation of the SDL will exert widespread impact beyond an immediate academic context thanks to the considerable appeal this material exerts to broader audiences. Non-academics who encounter Sterne's works and their adaptations are typically astounded at how innovative and engaging this material is, and at the purchase which seemingly new phenomena such as literary adaptation and celebrity culture held in the eighteenth-century popular imagination.

However, this material is located in restricted library and museum collections. Moreover, even some of the more famous items which have been digitised (by ECCO, Google Books, and Gutenberg) are without editorial frameworks, flawed by poor OCR technology, and fail to engage with the visual elements of these experimental fictions. ECCO omits the blank pages, Gutenberg represents no images, and no resource allows the user to search visual elements by their characteristics or mode of production (engraving, typography, mise-en-page). The SDL will allow all users open access to a high-quality resource that curates this intriguing material to enable visitors to explore and understand it in an engaging and informed way through its presentation, search facility, and through the informed but approachable explanatory text accompanying the dataset. General users will gain access to established scholarly expertise, but will also be encouraged to make connections across this material for themselves using the search facility, and by the network of links the SDL will establish with external online resources, such as the LST website. It will vividly demonstrate Sterne's innovations in narrative technique and graphic experimentation, and how and why they created such an energetic springboard for further inventiveness. It will further bring these textual artefacts to life by an animated film which will introduce users to, and enrich understanding of, this material and its appeal.

The SDL's partnership with the LST will foster a collaborative relationship that will immediately benefit this charitable organisation: providing links to the LST website will drive visitors towards it, and alert them to the wide range of outreach programmes, educational initiatives, and artistic enterprises which the LST spear-heads. It is hoped that the SDL will also raise awareness of and encourage footfall to the museum and thereby enhance its revenue for the future preservation, enhancement, and promotion of its collections.

The project's partnership with CUL, a world-renowned research library, builds on its expanding portfolio of Digital Library initiatives to further its aim in bringing its vast store of treasures to a wider audience, supported by the academic expertise which informs public knowledge of its collections. The SDL and the research that underpins it creates a collaboration between these organisations which enables them to benefit from the strengths of their collections and to share skills and expertise in conservation, digital imaging, and the representation of their collections online, to expand public awareness of the wealth and significance of their respective holdings.