Sterne's case is an especially illustrative one for this study because he reenacts the transition from patrons and a coterie audience to booksellers and a consuming public that had transformed authorship as a whole during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Though that transformation took place over a period of more than a century, Sterne, I will argue, experienced it all during his brief career as a writer. In a way that is matched perhaps only by Samuel Johnson's indignant rejection of Lord Chesterfield's patronage in 1755, the story of Sterne's career is emblematic of the most basic changes in cultural production that took place during the eighteenth century, and through him we can assess with some precision what authors lost and what they gained as the conditions of literary production were realigned.

At first, Sterne relied on the Church of England, the central organizing feature of which was a system of individual patronage, for his understanding of professional advancement and success. His initial beliefs about patronage as a universal means of public validation made his transition from clergyman to author almost seamless. The second stage is characterized by Sterne's reimagining the function of patron, and by his earliest awareness of a mass audience. I argue that by soliciting David Garrick's aid in the promotion of Tristram Shandy, Sterne sought to combine a patronage that consisted exclusively of publicity with a uniquely theatrical appeal to potential readers. He behaved as though Garrick were his aristocratic patron (though he received no money from him), and with Garrick's help he courted a broad readership by means analogous to those that the actor had perfected. The third stage is marked by Sterne's uncertain reaction to the flood of public attention that followed the publication of the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy. Sterne first saw the pamphlet attacks and imitations as flattering, but quickly grew disillusioned with them. Throughout this period, which spanned from May 1760 to the publication of volumes three and four in January 1761, Sterne struggled to regain authorial control over the book and characters that he had released to the English reading public in the previous year. Finally, Sterne's complex relationship with the Monthly and the Critical is the focus of the final stage of his career and culminates an intensive process of professionalization. Though nothing about the reception of Tristram Shandy could be called ordinary, this last set of influences encompasses Sterne's normal interaction with the newer, institutional forces that were so prominent in the literary culture of his day. . .

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