Not sure why you'd want to sort by album, *then* by artist, but you can probably avoid the grouping problem by just ensuring that the artist name is entered in both Artist and Album Artist.

You might also want to make sure the disc numbers are entered (it's usually 1 of 1, but iTunes can't assume that if it's not entered; it could be part of a multi-disc set), and Compilation is set to 'No' for all tracks.

There should be no need to manually enter anything in the sort fields. If all the info is correct and the albums still aren't grouping properly by artist, it's an iTunes issue that should be reported to Apple:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

I wanted to sort by album then by artist so that the three albums named 'Home' would be grouped by artist when I got to that section of the list...

-rob.