Background
Sterne was born in Clonmel, Ireland, on November 24, 1713, the son of an English army officer, Roger Sterne, and an Irish mother, Agnes.
(Endlessly digressive, boundlessly imaginative and unmatch...)
Endlessly digressive, boundlessly imaginative and unmatched in its absurd and timeless wit Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations. The text and notes of this volume are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, with a critical introduction by Melvyn New and Christopher Ricks's introductory essay from the first Penguin Classics edition. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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( 'Love is nothing without feeling. And feeling is still l...)
'Love is nothing without feeling. And feeling is still less without love.' Celebrated in its own day as the progenitor of 'a school of sentimental writers', A Sentimental Journey (1768) has outlasted its many imitators because of the humour and mischievous eroticism that inform Mr Yorick's travels. Setting out to journey to France and Italy he gets little further than Lyons but finds much to appreciate, in contrast to contemporary travel writers whom Sterne satirizes in the figures of Smelfungus and Mundungus. A master of ambiguity and double entendre, Sterne is nevertheless as concerned as his peers with exploring the nature of virtue; unlike other writers of sentimental fiction Sterne insists on the inseparability of desire and feeling. This new edition includes a selection from The Sermons of Mr Yorick, which shed light on the concerns of the Journey, The Journal to Eliza, which records Sterne's feelings as he languishes for the company of Eliza Draper, and A Political Romance, the satire on a local ecclesiastical squabble that was the catalyst for Sterne's literary career. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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(Although he is perhaps better known for his Life and Opin...)
Although he is perhaps better known for his Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne also published another equally as intriguing novel entitled, A Sentimental Journey Through France & Italy. The book recounts the travels of the English narrator, Yorick, from Calais, through Paris and towards the Italian frontier. But unlike most common travelogues, it is replete with the same idiosyncrasies as Sterne's more famous book, Tristram Shandy. The em-dash, so common in his first book, creates a story-telling atmosphere that stops abruptly and then goes - into another scene or somewhere completely digressive. Since the narrator is traveling through France throughout the better part of the novel, a great deal of French phrases are sprinkled throughout the novel. Mon dieu!, Le Diable!, and femme de chambre, make more than one appearance, for example. The book is strange and quite unlike any other book of its time. Samuel Johnson once wrote that, Nothing odd will do long, when asked about Sterne's work, but, as we present this e-book edition of the book, some two-hundred and some-odd years after its publication, I believe we can all agree that Mr. Johnson was most certainly in the wrong.
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(This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works of L...)
This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works of Laurence Sterne, with numerous illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Sterne's life and works * Concise introductions to the novels and other texts * ALL the novels sermons and letters, with individual contents tables * Images of how the books were first printed, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Includes Sterne's JOURNAL TO ELIZA, discovered many years after his death appearing here for the first time in digital print * Rare non-fiction texts often missed out of collections * Features two biographies - discover Sterne's literary life * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Satires and Novels A POLITICAL ROMANCE THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY The Sermons THE SERMONS OF LAURENCE STERNE The Letters LETTERS FROM YORICK TO ELIZA ORIGINAL LETTERS OF THE LATE REVEREND MR. LAURENCE STERNE LETTERS OF THE LATE REV. MR. LAURENCE STERNE TO HIS MOST INTIMATE FRIENDS The Non-Fiction JOURNAL TO ELIZA YORICKS MEDITATIONS UPON VARIOUS INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT SUBJECTS EXPLANATORY REMARKS UPON THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY: WHEREIN, THE MORALS AND POLITICS OF THIS PIECE ARE CLEARLY LAID OPEN, BY JEREMIAH KUNASTROKIUS, M.D. THE BEAUTIES OF STERNE The Biographies MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE AND FAMILY OF THE LATE REVEREND MR. LAURENCE STERNE, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF STERNE by H.D. Traill Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles
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(At once endlessly facetious and highly serious, Sterne's ...)
At once endlessly facetious and highly serious, Sterne's great comic novel contains some of the best-known and best-loved characters in English literature--including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, and Dr. Slop--and boasts one of the most innovative and whimsical narrative styles in all literature. This revised edition of Sterne's extraordinary novel retains the text based on the first editions of the original nine volumes (with Sterne's later changes), adds two illustrations by William Hogarth, and expands and updates the introduction, bibliography, and notes, to make this the most critically up-to-date edition available. The text of the novel preserves, as far as possible, the appearance of Sterne's idiosyncratic typography and features such as black pages, marbled pages, blank pages, missing chapters and other devices. The introduction sheds light on the novel's innovations and influence and provides a biographical account of the author. Comprehensive notes identify the profusion of references and reveal previously overlooked sources. The book will appear in time for the 250th anniversary of the publication of first two volumes. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Sterne was born in Clonmel, Ireland, on November 24, 1713, the son of an English army officer, Roger Sterne, and an Irish mother, Agnes.
After spending his early years moving about with his father's regiment, he attended school in Yorkshire from 1723 to 1731. Sterne received a bachelor of arts degree from Jesus College, Cambridge, took orders in 1737, and in 1738 became the vicar at Sutton-in-the-Forest, near York, the first of several benefices in and near York that he held.
The British novelist Laurence Sterne produced only two works of fiction, but he ranks as one of the major novelists of the 18th century because of his experiments with the structure and organization of the novel. The English novel came of age in the 18th century. Daniel Defoe had contributed realistic detail in the 17206; Samuel Richardson had showed the dramatic intensity inherent in the epistolary novel; Henry Fielding had combined the satirical portrayal of contemporary manners with elaborate and carefully worked-out plots. Laurence Sterne, however, published the single most idiosyncratic novel of the century, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760 - 1767). The apparent plotlessness of Tristram Shandy, the endless digressions and wordplay, and the use of the narrator's psychological consciousness as the governing structure in the novel make Sterne unique among the early masters of the English novel and suggest a tie to the stream-of-consciousness novelists who appeared later. In 1743 Sterne published his first verses, "The Unknown World, Verses Occasioned by Hearing a Pass-Bell, " in the Gentleman's Magazine. But neither his verses nor his second work, A Political Romance (1759), later called The History of a Good Warm Watch, a work that had grown out of a quarrel with fellow clerics, had prepared the English reading audience for the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, which were published early in 1760. The enormous popularity of Sterne's unusual novel quickly made him a celebrity and gave him social access to the great houses of London and Bath. In 1762 the consumption that plagued his entire life forced him to abandon London society and to seek better health in France. Sterne's letters to Mrs. Draper were collected in the Journal to Eliza. His local reputation around York was based, at least in part, on his eccentric dress and habits, his mordant wit, and his fund of indecorous anecdotes. It is said that he preached sermons on brotherly love with unusual rancor and ill temper. He died in London on March 18, 1768. Tristram Shandy With the London publication of volumes 1 and 2 of Tristram Shandy on Jan. 1, 1760, Sterne was launched as a successful author. Within a few months, Sterne had become a literary lion in London.
Sterne published volumes 3-6 in 1761; volumes 7 and 8 appeared in 1765; and in 1767, not long before Sterne's death, volume 9 appeared. Although Dr. Samuel Johnson observed of Sterne's novel that "nothing odd will do long, " it has survived both neglect and the attacks of critics, and it continues to please, puzzle, and attract more readers than any other 18th-century English novel. The apparently chaotic structure and puzzling chronology of Tristram Shandy are easily clarified. For example, Tristram is born on Nov. 5, 1718; attends Jesus College, Cambridge; and begins his latest volume on or about Aug. 12, 1766. Parson Yorick dies in 1748. Sterne's intention, of course, was to experiment with the straight-forward chronological development of plot that had previously characterized English fiction. By dramatically scrambling chronological and psychological durations, he emphasized the dual nature of time, something to which an individual responds both by reason and by emotion. Despite the immediate confusions of the book, with its blank pages, marbled pages, squiggles, erudite references, footnotes, and puzzling time sequence (Tristram is not born until a third of the way through the work), the novel has an artistic structure of its own, a coherence that resides primarily in the character of Tristram, who holds together all of the elements of the novel, shifting his attention from character to character and from idea to idea. Influenced by the work of John Locke, Sterne concentrated less on the passage of time as the clock measures it than on mental time, in which events can move more or less quickly than clock time. Because the consciousness of the narrator is the unifying factor in the novel, Tristram Shandy can be considered a completed work. The characters in Tristram Shandy deserve special note because of their idiosyncracies. Tristram himself seems so scatterbrained that he cannot organize his thoughts. He is quickly and easily diverted from whatever topic he is discussing to frequent digressions. While Mrs. Shandy, Obadiah, Susanna, and Dr. Slop never escape from actuality, "My Father" and Uncle Toby ride special "hobbyhorses. " "My Father" believes that life should be presided over by theory, but he never troubles to see that life is so ordered. Indeed, life seems less important to him than the idea and contemplation of it. He propounds his theory of noses (the longer the better), of names (Tristram is the worst of all possible names), and of education (the Tristapedia) in the course of the novel. Although Uncle Toby is literally too sentimental to harm a fly, he is so obsessed with warfare, military campaigns, and battle strategy that he can regret that the Peace of Utrecht has ended war in Europe. Tristram Shandy is bawdy, satiric, humorous, sentimental, filled with Sterne's extensive learning and crammed with footnotes and foreign languages. Much of the novel is made up of talk about Sterne's writing chores and his rhetorical relation to the reader. The book stands as a rich catalog of the possibilities of misunderstanding and confusion inherent in language. A Sentimental Journey Parson Yorick, who dies in Tristram Shandy, was habitually identified with Sterne, an identification that he himself promoted in 1760 and again in 1766 by publishing his sermons under the title The Sermons of Mr. Yorick. This identification is also apparent in the brief A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768), a reworking of volume 7 of Tristram Shandy. In both works Parson Yorick is a whimsical, good-hearted, slightly daffy character. The Journey, employing typical Sternean techniques, follows Yorick on a tour through France and Italy punctuated with misadventures, sexual ploys, and the usual fill of digressions and abrupt shifts in topic and tone. Sterne's Sermons, from which he earned a considerable income, shows the development of a moral theory that is more imaginative than his orthodox religion and more complex as a philosophy. Sterne's fiction exhibits his ability to give immediacy to a dialogue; to handle dramatic techniques with great skill; to capture idiom with delightful mimicry; to quote frequently-if not always accurately-from the Bible and William Shakespeare and other English authors; and to present his ideas with a witty indecision that charms the reader even as it goads his patience. The small number of letters that form Sterne's correspondence exhibit his playfulness with language and provide an intensely personal view of him. Unfortunately, many of Sterne's letters were burned by John Botham or mutilated by Sterne's daughter, Lydia, before their first publication in 1775.
(Endlessly digressive, boundlessly imaginative and unmatch...)
(At once endlessly facetious and highly serious, Sterne's ...)
(Although he is perhaps better known for his Life and Opin...)
(This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works of L...)
( 'Love is nothing without feeling. And feeling is still l...)
Quotations: He admitted that he intended to publish additional volumes as part of the novel "as long as I live, 'tis, in fact, my hobbyhorse. "
Sterne's irascibility and bawdy humor were well known to his congregations and to the English public.
Quotes from others about the person
There were baffled readers, bored readers, and indignant readers, but as Sterne observed, even those who condemned the book bought it. Samuel Richardson found the work "too gross to be inflaming, " and Horace Mann noted: "I don't understand it. It was probably the intention that nobody should. "
During the last winter before his death, Sterne readied his A Sentimental Journey for the press and carried on a curious platonic affair with Mrs. Eliza Draper, the wife of a Bombay official in the East India Company.