Sterne grew up in a military family, travelling mainly in Ireland but briefly in England. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge on a sizarship, gaining bachelor's and master's degrees, and was ordained as a priest in 1738. While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741. He briefly wrote political propaganda for the Whigs, but abandoned politics in 1742. In 1759, he wrote an ecclesiastical satireA Political Romance, which embarrassed the church and was burned. Having discovered his talent for comedy, at age 46 he dedicated himself to humour writing as a vocation. Also in 1759, he published the first volume of Tristram Shandy, which was an enormous success. He was a literary celebrity for the rest of his life. In addition to his novels, he published several volumes of sermons. Sterne died in 1768 and was buried in the yard of St George's, Hanover Square.
Biography
Early life
Laurence Sterne was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary, on 24 November 1713.[1] His father, Roger Sterne, was an ensign in a British regiment recently returned from Dunkirk.[2] Roger's social standing was far lower than that of his recent ancestors: Roger's grandfather Richard Sterne had been the archbishop of York.[3] Roger was the second son of Richard's second son, and consequently, Roger inherited little of the familial wealth.[4] Roger left his family to join the army at the age of 25; he enlisted uncommissioned, which was unusual for someone from a family of high social position.[5] Roger married Agnes Herbert née Nuttall, the widow of a military captain, in 1711.[6][4] Laurence was the second of their seven children,[4] one of only three to survive to adulthood.[7]
The first decade of Laurence Sterne's life was impoverished and unsettled.[8] After his birth, the family spent six months in Clonmel, then ten months at Roger's mother's estate in Elvington, North Yorkshire while Roger had no army posting.[9] From 1715 to 1723, the Sternes moved repeatedly (about once a year) between poor family lodgings in army barracks in Britain and Ireland,[10] with brief ownership of a townhouse in Dublin during a particularly prosperous stint from 1717 to 1719.[11]. These postings included three separate moves to Dublin, at other times living in Plymouth, the Isle of Wight, Wicklow, Annamoe, and Carrickfergus.[12] In 1723, at the age of ten, Sterne was relocated to his uncle's household in Halifax, on the condition that he would repay his uncle for the cost of his upkeep and education.[13] This arrangement reflected both the poor financial resources of Sterne's father, and the strained relationship he had with his wealthier family members.[13] Sterne never saw his father again, as Roger was next ordered to Jamaica where he died of malaria in 1731.[14]
Education and ecclesiastical career
Sterne attended boarding school at Hipperholme Grammar School in Yorkshire, near his uncle's estate.[15] There, he received a traditional classical education.[16] In July 1733, at the age of twenty, he was admitted to Jesus College, Oxford with a sizarship that allowed him to afford attendance.[17] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in January 1737.[18] Sterne was ordained as a deacon on 6 March 1737[19] and as a priest on 20 August 1738.[20] He returned to Oxford in the summer of 1740 to be awarded his Master of Arts.[18] His religion is said to have been the "centrist Anglicanism of his time", known as latitudinarianism.[21] A few days after his ordination as a priest, Sterne was awarded the vicarage living of Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire.[22]
Sterne married Elizabeth Lumley on 30 March 1741, despite both being ill with consumption.[23] Only one of their several children survived infancy, a daughter named Lydia.[24] Throughout their marriage, Sterne had adulterous affairs, and developed "an unsavoury but deserved reputation as a libertine".[25]
In 1743, he was presented to the neighbouring living of Stillington by Reverend Richard Levett, prebendary of Stillington, who was patron of the living. Subsequently, Sterne did duty both there and at Sutton.[26] Sterne lived in Sutton for 20 years, during which time he continued a close friendship that had begun at Cambridge with John Hall-Stevenson, a witty and accomplished bon vivant, owner of Skelton Hall in the Cleveland district of Yorkshire.[27]
Sterne's life at this time was closely tied with his uncle, Jaques Sterne, the archdeacon of Cleveland and precentor of York Minster. Sterne's uncle was an ardent Whig,[28] and urged Sterne to begin a career of political journalism.[29] Sterne wrote anonymous propaganda in the York Gazetteer from 1741 to 1742.[30] Sterne's published attacks on the Tory party earned him career favours from the church (including a prebendary of York Minster), but also harsh personal criticism. Sterne abruptly abandoned his political writing, leading to a permanent falling-out with his uncle, and stalling his ecclesiastical career.[24]
In 1744, Sterne purchased several pieces of farmland in Sutton, with the hope that raising crops and dairy cattle would supplement his household's foodstores and finances.[31] However, the farm was not particularly successful. In 1758, Sterne gave up directly farming the land, and leased the property out.[32]
In 1759, Sterne contributed to a pamphlet war related to complex church politics and Sterne's patron John Fountayne. Fountayne and a rival published a series of open letters criticizing each other, which spurred several replies from their acquaintance.[33] Sterne published A Political Romance; or, The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat in January 1759, a satirical work with unflattering caricatures of Fountayne's critics.[34] Unusually for a pamphlet, Sterne explicitly attached his name to the work.[35] The Archbishop of York was embarrassed by how public the church's internal disputes had become, and ordered all 500 copies of A Political Romance burned. Sterne complied, but a handful of copies accidentally survived from other owners.[36]
Despite its lack of success, A Political Romance was a turning point for Sterne. He later wrote that, before finishing it, "he hardly knew he could write at all, much less with humour, so as to make his reader laugh."[37] At the age of 46, Sterne dedicated himself to writing for the rest of his life. It was while living in the countryside, failing in his attempts to supplement his income as a farmer and struggling with tuberculosis, that Sterne began work on his best-known novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the first volumes of which were published in 1759. Sterne was at work on his celebrated comic novel during the year that his mother died, his wife was seriously ill, and his daughter was also taken ill with a fever.[38] He wrote as fast as he possibly could, composing the first 18 chapters between January and March of 1759.[39] Sterne borrowed money for the printing of his novel, suggesting that he was confident in the prospective commercial success of his work.[40]
The publication of Tristram Shandy made Sterne famous in London and on the continent. He was delighted by the attention, famously saying, "I wrote not [to] be fed but to be famous."[41] He spent part of each year in London, being fêted as new volumes appeared.[42] As Sterne assiduously promoted his book, some of the attention he received was scandal: at the time, it was slightly disreputable for any gentleman to write for financial gain; for a clergyman to appear motivated by money, and to use "indecent" humour to pursue it, was doubly questionable.[43] Sterne's bawdiness was criticized in a series of 1760s pamphlets, and he was encouraged to "mend his style" by the Bishop of Gloucester.[44] Even after the publication of volumes three and four of Tristram Shandy, Sterne's love of attention (especially as related to financial success) remained undiminished. In one letter, he wrote, "One half of the town abuse my book as bitterly, as the other half cry it up to the skies — the best is, they abuse it and buy it, and at such a rate, that we are going on with a second edition, as fast as possible."[42]Baron Fauconberg rewarded Sterne by appointing him as the perpetual curate of Coxwold in the North Riding of Yorkshire in March 1760.[45]
In 1766, in the early days of British debates about slavery, the composer and former slave Ignatius Sancho wrote to Sterne,[46] encouraging him to use his pen to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade.[47] Sterne wrote back to say that he had just written a scene sympathizing with the oppression of a black servant, which appeared in the next published volume of Tristram Shandy.[48] Sterne's widely publicised response to Sancho's letter became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature.[48]
Struggling again with his ill health, Sterne departed England for France in 1762 in an effort to find a climate that would alleviate his suffering. Sterne attached himself to a diplomatic party bound for Turin, as England and France were still adversaries in the Seven Years' War. Sterne was gratified by his reception in France, where reports of the genius of Tristram Shandy made him a celebrity.[49] He stayed in France until 1764, followed by a trip through France and Italy from 1765 to 1766.[50] Aspects of his experiences abroad were incorporated into Sterne's second novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.[49]
Eliza
Early in 1767, Sterne met Eliza Draper, the wife of an official of the East India Company, while she was staying on her own in London.[51] He was captivated by Eliza's charm and vivacity, and they began a mutual flirtation.[52][53] They met frequently and exchanged miniature portraits. Sterne's admiration turned into an obsession, which he took no trouble to conceal. To his great distress, Eliza had to return to India three months after their first meeting, and he died from consumption a year later without seeing her again. In 1768, Sterne published his Sentimental Journey, which contains some extravagant references to her; and their relationship aroused considerable interest. He also wrote his Journal to Eliza, part of which he sent to her, and the rest of which came to light when it was presented to the British Museum in 1894. After Sterne's death, Eliza allowed ten of his letters to be published under the title Letters from Yorick to Eliza and succeeded in suppressing her letters to him, though some blatant forgeries were produced in a volume of Eliza's Letters to Yorick.[54]
Death
Portrait bust by Joseph Nollekens, 1766, National Portrait Gallery, London
Less than a month after Sentimental Journey was published, Sterne died in his lodgings at 41 Old Bond Street on 18 March 1768, at the age of 54.[55] He was buried in the churchyard of St George's, Hanover Square on 22 March.[56]
It was rumoured that Sterne's body was stolen shortly after it was interred and sold to anatomists at Cambridge University. Circumstantially, it was said that his body was recognised by Charles Collignon, who knew him[57][58] and discreetly reinterred him back in St George's, in an unknown plot. A year later a group of Freemasons erected a memorial stone with a rhyming epitaph near to his original burial place. A second stone was erected in 1893, correcting some factual errors on the memorial stone. When the churchyard of St. George's was redeveloped in 1969, amongst 11,500 skulls disinterred, several were identified with drastic cuts from anatomising or a post-mortem examination. One was identified to be of a size that matched a bust of Sterne made by Nollekens.[59][60] The skull was held up to be his, albeit with "a certain area of doubt".[61] Along with nearby skeletal bones, these remains were transferred to Coxwoldchurchyard in 1969 by the Laurence Sterne Trust.[62][63][64] The story of the reinterment of Sterne's skull in Coxwold is alluded to in Malcolm Bradbury's novel To the Hermitage.[65]
Works
First edition of Tristram Shandy, printed in nine volumes, part of the collection of the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall
The works of Laurence Sterne are few in comparison to other eighteenth-century authors of comparable stature.[66] Sterne's early works were letters; he had two sermons published (in 1747 and 1750) and tried his hand at satire.[67] He was involved in and wrote about local politics in 1742.[67] His major publication prior to Tristram Shandy was the satire A Political Romance (1759), aimed at conflicts of interest within York Minster.[67] A posthumously published piece on the art of preaching, A Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais, appears to have been written in 1759.[68]Rabelais was by far Sterne's favourite author, and in his correspondence, he made clear that he considered himself as Rabelais' successor in humour writing, distancing himself from Jonathan Swift.[69][70]
Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman sold widely in England and throughout Europe.[71] Translations of the work began to appear in all the major European languages almost immediately upon its publication.[72] The novel itself starts with the narration, by Tristram, of his own conception. It proceeds mostly by what Sterne calls "progressive digressions" so that we do not reach Tristram's birth before the third volume.[73][74] The novel is rich in characters and humour, and the influences of Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes are present throughout. The novel ends after 9 volumes, published over a decade, but without anything that might be considered a traditional conclusion. Sterne inserts sermons, essays and legal documents into the pages of his novel; and he explores the limits of typography and print design by including marbled pages and an entirely black page within the narrative.[67]
English writer and literary criticSamuel Johnson's verdict in 1776 was that "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last."[75] This is strikingly different from the views of continental European critics of the day, who praised Sterne and Tristram Shandy as innovative and superior. Voltaire called it "clearly superior to Rabelais", and later Goethe praised Sterne as "the most beautiful spirit that ever lived".[67] Swedish translator Johan Rundahl described Sterne as an arch-sentimentalist.[76] Sterne influenced European writers as diverse as Denis Diderot[77] and the German Romanticists.[72] His work also had noticeable influence over Brazilian author Machado de Assis, who made use of the digressive technique in the novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.[78] The Russian Formalist writer Viktor Shklovsky regarded Tristram Shandy as the archetypal, quintessential novel, "the most typical novel of world literature."[79] Many of the innovations that Sterne introduced, adaptations in form that were an exploration of what constitutes the novel, were highly influential to Modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and more recent writers such as Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace.[80]Italo Calvino referred to Tristram Shandy as the "undoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century".[80] More recently, scholarly opinions of Tristram Shandy include those who minimize its significance as an innovation. Since the 1950s, following the lead of D. W. Jefferson, there are those who argue that, whatever its legacy of influence may be, Tristram Shandy in its original context actually represents a resurgence of a much older, Renaissance tradition of "Learned Wit" – owing a debt to such influences as the Scriblerian approach.[81]
Sterne's final novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, has many stylistic parallels with Tristram Shandy, and the narrator is one of the minor characters from the earlier novel.[82] At its first publication, A Sentimental Journey was warmly received by readers who saw it as more sentimental and less bawdy than Tristram Shandy.[83] From Sterne's death through the nineteenth century, A Sentimental Journey was considered Sterne's best and most beloved work, and it was more widely reprinted than Tristram Shandy.[84] Today, A Sentimental Journey is often interpreted by critics as part of the same artistic project to which Tristram Shandy belongs.[85] In addition to his fiction, two volumes of Sterne's Sermons were published during his lifetime; more copies of his Sermons were sold in his lifetime than copies of Tristram Shandy.[86] In the years after Sterne's death, his family published additional sermons,[87] as well as letter collections of his correspondence.[88][89]
Publication history
1743 – The Unknown World: Verses Occasioned by Hearing a Pass-Bell (disputed, possibly written by Hubert Stogdon)[90]
1747 – The Case of Elijah and the Widow of Zerephath
1750 – The Abuses of Conscience
1759 – A Political Romance
1759 – Tristram Shandy vols. 1 and 2
1760 – The Sermons of Mr. Yorick vol. 1 and 2
1761 – Tristram Shandy vols. 3–6
1765 – Tristram Shandy vols. 7 and 8
1766 – The Sermons of Mr. Yorick vols. 3 and 4
1767 – Tristram Shandy vol. 9
1768 – A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
1769 – Sermons by the Late Rev. Mr. Sterne vols. 5–7 (a continuation of The Sermons of Mr. Yorick)[87]
↑ Alas, Poor Yorick, Letters, The Times, 16 June 1969, Kenneth Monkman, Laurence Sterne Trust. "If we have reburied the wrong one, nobody, I feel beyond reasonable doubt, would enjoy the situation more than Sterne"
↑ Suciu, Andreia Irina (2009). "The Sense of History in Malcolm Bradbury's Work". Economy Transdisciplinarity Cognition (2): 152–160. ProQuest757935757.
Yorick is a character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also known as Tristram Shandy, is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years. It purports to be a biography of the eponymous character. Its style is marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices. The first edition was printed by Ann Ward on Coney Street, York.
William Combe was a British miscellaneous writer. His early life was that of an adventurer, his later was passed chiefly within the "rules" of the King's Bench Prison. He is chiefly remembered as the author of The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax, a comic poem, illustrated by artist Thomas Rowlandson's colour plates, that satirised William Gilpin. Combe also wrote a series of imaginary letters, supposed to have been written by the second, or "wicked" Lord Lyttelton. Of a similar kind were his letters between Swift and "Stella". He also wrote the letterpress for various illustrated books, and was a general hack.
Coxwold is a village and civil parish in the former Hambleton District of North Yorkshire, England, in the North York Moors National Park. It is 18 miles north of York and is where the Rev. Laurence Sterne wrote A Sentimental Journey.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It follows the Reverend Mr. Yorick on a picaresque journey through France, narrated from a sentimental point of view. Yorick is a character from his bestselling previous novel Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) who also serves as Sterne's alter ego. The novel was planned as a four-volume work, but Sterne died in 1768 with only the first two volumes published; Yorick never makes it to Italy.
Journal to Eliza is a work by British author Laurence Sterne. It was published posthumously in 1904. It is written as a diary, but was supposedly intended as a love letter to Eliza Draper. Sterne predicted that it would be published long after the deaths of both himself and Draper.
Hafen Slawkenbergius is a fictional writer referenced in Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. Slawkenbergius was "distinguished by the length of his nose, and a great authority on the subject of noses".
Dr Slop is a choleric physician and "man-midwife" in Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759).
A Cock and Bull Story is a 2005 British comedy film directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is a film-within-a-film, featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making of a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th-century metafictional novel Tristram Shandy. Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles. Since the book is about a man attempting but failing to write his autobiography, the film takes the form of being about failing to make the film.
The sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is an 18th- and 19th-century literary genre which presents and celebrates the concepts of sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility. Sentimentalism, which is to be distinguished from sensibility, was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction beginning in the eighteenth century in reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age.
Jacques the Fatalist and his Master is a novel by Denis Diderot, written during the period 1765–1780. The first French edition was published posthumously in 1796, but it was known earlier in Germany, thanks to Schiller's partial translation, which appeared in 1785 and was retranslated into French in 1793, as well as Mylius's complete German version of 1792.
A Political Romance is a 1759 novel by Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy.
Shandy Hall is a writer's house museum in the former home of the Rev. Laurence Sterne in Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England. Sterne lived there from 1760 to 1768 as perpetual curate of Coxwold. He is remembered for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.
Eliza Draper is best known as Laurence Sterne's Eliza. She was his muse and is commemorated in his Sentimental Journey and Journal to Eliza. She had literary talents that were developed under Sterne's influence, and she wrote many long and interesting letters from India, vividly describing the life and customs there.
Yorick is an unseen character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the dead court jester whose skull is exhumed by the First Gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of the play. The sight of Yorick's skull evokes a reminiscence by Prince Hamlet of the man, who apparently played a role during Hamlet's upbringing:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Laurence Sterne was an Anglican clergyman. In that position he delivered many sermons. Early in his career, he decided to publish his sermons. At first, only two were published. Sterne later parodied sermon writing in his novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman along with adding semi-serious sermons directly into the text. Throughout his career, Sterne continued to preach and collect his own sermons.
The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper is a complex satirical novel by Prussian Romantic-era author E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was first published in 1819–1821 as Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern, in two volumes. A planned third volume was never completed.
James Dodsley (1724–1797) was an English bookseller.
John Hall-Stevenson, in his youth known as John Hall, was an English country gentleman and writer.
The Captive, from Sterne is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby completed in 1774 and now in the National Gallery of Canada. Sterne's Captive, first exhibited by the artist in 1778, is a similar painting by Wright in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. The latter painting resulted in a rare engraving, as its purchaser commissioned a print run of only twenty copies before the copper printing plate was destroyed. In 2012, Derby Museum commissioned another Captive painting from Emma Tooth.
References
Barbosa, Maria José Somerlate (May 1992). "Sterne and Machado: Parodic and Intertextual Play in 'Tristram Shandy' and 'Memórias'". The Comparatist. 16: 24–48. doi:10.1353/com.1992.0014. JSTOR44366842. S2CID201767984.
Gerard, W.B.; Newbould, M-C. (2021). "Introduction: A Sentimental Journey's Critical Legacies". Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey: A Legacy to the World. Bucknell University Press.
New, Melvyn (October 1972). "Sterne's Rabelaisian Fragment: A Text from the Holograph Manuscript". PMLA. 87 (5): 1083–1092. doi:10.2307/461185. JSTOR461185. S2CID163743375.
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