ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Princess Izabela Czartoryska, the hostess of the celebrated Puławy circle, as the finest of Poland’s early Sterneans. It reconstructs the dominant reception patterns of Laurence Sterne’s work and aims at a proper evaluation of Princess Izabela’s role in orienting Sterne readings in late eighteenth-century Poland, focusing on several unpublished manuscripts collected in the Czartoryski Library in Cracow: Extracts from Literature (Extraits), containing excerpts from Tristram Shandy, Catalogue of Souvenirs from the Gothic House in Puławy, including a Sternean quotation in a rather surprising context; as well as selected correspondence revolving around Sterne’s work.
