Letters from Yorick to Eliza; Letters from Eliza to Yorick

vi, 104pp; [4], xv, [1], 17-70pp. Plain calf leather bound boards, five raised bands on spine (front board detached, worn and rubbed all round). Two volumes - Yorick's Letters to Eliza and Eliza's letters to Yorick - bound in one. Internally neat, tidy and remarkably fresh barring some toning at the margins of the endpapers. Sterne's infamous obsession with the young Mrs Eliza Draper, which she did little to discourage, was well-known in his lifetime. The first volume here contains ten of the letters he wrote to Eliza, after she had departed London to return to husband in India. It is said Eliza sanctioned their publication after Sterne's death. The second volume is of more dubious origin. A collection of letters said to be from Eliza to Sterne (Yorick), which are now wildly held to be fake, and likely the work of one William Combe. 16mo.