Laurence Sterne in Germany / A Contribution to the Study of the Literary Relations of / England and Germany in the Eighteenth Century

Mr. Thayer has undertaken to write, in detail and from the sources, the history of Sterne’s vogue in Germany. As thus broadly defined the task had not before been attempted, although phases of it had been treated, more or less thoroughly, in recent monographs. The work here submitted, the result of careful research in a number of American and European libraries, is in my judgment an interesting and valuable contribution to our knowledge of the literary relations of England and Germany at the time of the great renascence of German letters.
Calvin Thomas.
Columbia University, May, 1905.
The following study was begun in the autumn of 1901, and was practically finished now more than a year ago. Since its completion two works of interest to lovers of Sterne have been issued, Czerny’s study of Sterne’s influence upon Hippel and Jean Paul, a work which the present author had planned as a continuation of this book, and Prof. Cross’s new definitive edition of Sterne.
I desire here to express my thanks to Prof. W. H. Carpenter, Prof. Calvin Thomas and Prof. W. P. Trent, under whose guidance my last year of University residence was spent: their interest in my work was generous and unfailing; their admirable scholarship has been and will continue to be an inspiration. I am indebted to Prof. Carpenter and Prof. Thomas for many helpful suggestions regarding the present work, and the latter especially has given freely of his valuable time to a consideration of my problems. I am grateful also to several other friends for helpful and kindly service, and to many librarians in this country and in Europe for their courtesy.
New York, May 1, 1905.
The indebtedness of German culture to other peoples has been the theme of much painstaking investigation. The history of German literature is, in large measure, the story of its successive periods of connection with the literatures of other lands, and hence scholars have sought with industry and insight to bound and explain such literary inter-relations.