Laurence Sterne (1713–1768) was an Irish-born English clergyman and novelist, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a wildly digressive, comic novel full of typographical games, and of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. His experiments with narrative make him a forerunner of modern fiction.
Works
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
A soldier's son
Laurence Sterne was born in 1713 in Clonmel, Ireland, the son of an army officer who moved his family from garrison to garrison. At ten he was sent to school in Yorkshire, and later studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, with the help of a cousin.
Ordained in the Church of England, he became vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, near York, in 1738, and married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741. For twenty years he lived as a country parson, farming, painting, playing the violin and writing occasional political pieces.
Tristram Shandy
In 1759 Sterne published, at his own expense in York, the first two volumes of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The narrator sets out to tell his life but keeps digressing, so that he is not even born until the third volume. The book includes a black page, a marbled page and a blank page for the reader to draw on.
When Sterne went to London in 1760 he found himself the most fashionable writer in England. Seven more volumes followed until 1767, along with his sermons, published under the name of Mr Yorick, the parson of the novel.
The sentimental traveller
Suffering from tuberculosis, Sterne travelled in France and Italy for his health. His journey inspired A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, published in February 1768, a short book of encounters and emotions that helped to make the word sentimental fashionable.
He died in London a few weeks later, in March 1768. In 1969 his remains, which had been stolen by body snatchers soon after his burial and later reburied, were moved by the Laurence Sterne Trust to the churchyard of Coxwold, near Shandy Hall, his home in Yorkshire.
Anecdotes
A professor's discovery
According to a story told at the time, Sterne's body was stolen from its grave by resurrection men and sold to the anatomy school at Cambridge, where a professor recognised the face of the famous writer on the dissecting table. The body was quietly returned.
The black page
When the beloved parson Yorick dies early in Tristram Shandy, Sterne marks his death with a page printed entirely in black. Early readers were astonished by this and other typographical tricks, which remain famous in the history of the book.
Frequently asked questions
What is Tristram Shandy about?
The narrator Tristram's attempt to tell the story of his life and opinions, constantly interrupted by digressions about his family, especially his father Walter and his uncle Toby.
Why is Tristram Shandy considered modern?
Because of its playful disregard for chronology, its digressions, its address to the reader and its visual tricks, which anticipate experimental novels of the twentieth century.
Where can Sterne's house be visited?
Shandy Hall, in Coxwold, North Yorkshire, where he wrote most of Tristram Shandy, is now a museum.