The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper held some trenchant views on indexing that seem appropriate here. Trevor-Roper was one of that rare breed of authors who are actually really rather good at indexing their own works; he has written that it was from Samuel Butler that he ‘derived the rudiments of my philosophy of indexing’, which included a belief that (prepare to be offended) an index ‘must be written by the author, not farmed out to a publisher’s hack’. But he did go on to say, more pertinently, that an index ‘must be readable in itself, continuously, as an added chapter’, which, if you read it first, ‘you will then want to read the book’. By this measure, the 1906 edition of Tristram Shandy has an index that is an enchanting success: not only is it imbibed with the spirit of Sterne, but reading through its entries, from ‘Abed-Nego’ to ‘Zoroaster’, by way of ‘farcy: a disease in horses, similar to glanders’ and ‘Momus: god of mockery, who wished small doors to be placed in each man’s breast’, it might just make you want to read the novel.