Apphia Peach, George Lord Lyttelton, and ’The Correspondents’:: An Annotated Edition of a Forgotten Gem (1775)

This book is an annotated edition of The Correspondents: An Original Novel (1775), a work, as the introduction argues, derived from A Sentimental Journey, and one of the best of the many later efforts to capture Sterne’s unique blend of sensibility and sensuality. The introduction will make the case for its authorship being an actual exchange of love letters between George Lord Lyttelton (1709-1773) and Apphia Peach Lyttelton (1743-1840), his daughter-in-law, 30 years younger than her father-in-law at the time of the exchange. In our inability to understand precisely what happened between the two is the genius of their imitation of Sterne. It is an ambiguity that results from the conscious reshaping of original letters into a narrative, probably by Apphia Peach in the 2 years between Lyttelton’s death and its publication. The correspondents exchange some 80 letters in all, many with references and quotations to writers in the literary tradition; these allusions will be annotated when at all possible. Particularly important are the allusions to Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, which was the origin of the design of The Correspondents, and to Shakespeare, Apphia Peach joining Lyttelton’s good friend Elizabeth Montagu in this early indication that the eighteenth-century elevation of Shakespeare was often the direct result of his women readers.

Melvyn New, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Florida, has been publishing on eighteenth-century literature since 1969. He was the editor of the University of Florida Works of Laurence Sterne in nine volumes, 1978-2014.