University of Florida Homepage

Melvyn New

Professor Emeritus

Melvyn New (AB Columbia, 1959; PhD, Vanderbilt, 1966) has been writing about literature, most especially that of the eighteenth century, for over thirty years.

Professor New edited, with Joan New, the Florida Edition of Tristram Shandy: The Text (1978), and with Richard A. Davies and W. G. Day, Tristram Shandy: The Notes (1986); this edition is the standard scholarly edition of the novel and forms the basis for his Penguin edition of the work (1997). In 1996, he published his edition of Sterne’s Sermons, volumes 4 and 5 of the Florida Works of Sterne. He is author of Laurence Sterne as Satirist (UF, 1969), Telling New Lies: Essays in Fiction, Past and Present (UF 1992), and “Tristram Shandy”: A Book for Free Spirits(Twayne, 1994); and editor of Approaches to Teaching “Tristram Shandy” (MLA, 1989); “Tristram Shandy”: Contemporary Critical Essays (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 1992); The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, 1861-1889 (UF, 1993); and Critical Essays on Laurence Sterne (G. K. Hall, 1998).

Professor New has published over 70 essays, notes, and book reviews on Sterne and other authors, both early modern and contemporary, in such journals as PMLAPhilological QuarterlyModern Fiction StudiesStudies in BibliographyPBSAThe Georgia ReviewEighteenth-Century StudiesEighteenth Century: Theory and InterpretationMLNEighteenth Century Fiction, and Word and Image. New also serves as the Sterne-Smollett editor of The Scribblerian and the American editor of The Shandean: The Annual Laurence Sterne Trust.

Professor New chaired the Department of English at the University of Florida from 1979 to 1988. He has been the recipient of three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the most recent in 1995–96 for work on volume 6 of the Florida Sterne: A Sentimental Journey and Journal to Eliza. In 1997 he was one of 30 recipients of the inaugural class of University of Florida Research Foundation Professorships.

Contact

  • office: Turlington Hall 4344
  • voice: (352) 392-6650, ext. 269
  • fax: (352) 392-0860
  • email: <mnew@english.ufl.edu>