Jonathan Odell and Laurence Sterne: A Transatlantic Connection

Students of early American literature, especially those who like satire, may be familiar with Jonathan Odell (1737-1818), Anglican priest, physician, and Loyalist poet. Students of Laurence Sterne probably will not be. Yet there are a series of remarkable conjunctions between the two writers, showing Sterne’s reach to the colonies, as well as Odell’s ability to maintain contact with the London literary world despite living most of his life on another continent. This essay examines the influence Sterne had on Odell, especially on his satiric poetry. There is no claim within that the two men’s politics were similar. In fact, that is unlikely. But their taste in literature was indeed coincident — an appreciation of Swift and Pope, for example — and that was reflected in Odell’s alluding to various well-known components of Sterne’s canon in his poetry, and especially in his repeated selection of Yoric[k] as a pseudonym and persona.