Bringing 18th century literature to a modern audience

In partnership with the Laurence Sterne Trust, researchers from the English Department at Northumbria University are introducing new audiences to the writings of the eighteenth-century novelist Laurence Sterne. People across the North East and Yorkshire now have opportunity to explore aspects of Sterne’s work through educational workshops and comedy nights.

Northumbria University is a leading centre for research into eighteenth-century literature and culture, with a particular expertise on the experimental novelist Laurence Sterne, the author of Tristram Shandy. Helen Williams, an English lecturer, has worked closely with the Laurence Sterne Trust based at Shandy Hall, North Yorkshire. Drawing on her own research and the wider expertise at Northumbria, Williams helped to design a schools outreach programme that complemented the exhibition Eliza Draper: An Absent Presence, which she also helped to curate.

Developed with teachers, the outreach programme focused on the letter writing aspect of the exhibition. Children from three schools in the North East and Yorkshire were invited to Shandy Hall and took part in letter writing workshops. They learned about Sterne’s distinctive writing style and the conventions that structure writing and had the opportunity to produce their own eighteenth-century letters, digitized on the Dear Sterne blog. Following the success of these workshops, the Laurence Sterne Trust offers a wider range of workshops for schools and has extended its geographic reach to primary schools outside of North Yorkshire.

Williams’s expertise has also help the Trust to secure a Heritage Lottery grant to produce The Good Humour Club, an ambitious year-long project offering a series of comedy nights, an exhibition, a period drama podcast and educational workshops to a broad public audience. The idea is based upon a book recently identified in the Shandy Hall collection about an eighteenth-century gentleman’s club set up to promote laughter and comedy as a means of living a long and healthy life.

Images (top to bottom)

Image 1: Case curated by Helen Williams, from the exhibition Eliza Draper: An Absent Presence

Image 2: Children from Tadcaster Primary School working with the Laurence Sterne Trust and Northumbria University

Image 3: Staff and PhD students from Northumbria at the Good Humour Club exhibition

Image 4: Northumbria staff and students listening to the Good Humour Club comedy play, available here

The below video shows how Northumbria recently introduced its 18-century research to the public as part of the national Being Human festival.

18th Century Legacies: The Past in our Present. from Northumbria University on Vimeo.