Sterne, Laurence (1713–1768)

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STERNE, LAURENCE (1713–1768)

STERNE, LAURENCE (1713–1768), English novelist. Sterne is perhaps most famous as the author of Tristram Shandy (1759–1767), his serially published comic novel that propelled him from his quiet life as an Anglican clergyman in Yorkshire to the heart of London's literary society. The son of an infantry ensign, Sterne grew up living in army barracks in England and Ireland before attending school in Yorkshire at the age of ten. From there, Sterne went to Jesus College, Cambridge, and in 1738 took holy orders, obtaining a living (an endowed ecclesiastical position) at a country parish church near York with the help of his uncle, an influential church lawyer. His career in the ministry was made more lucrative when, in the 1740s, he was employed by his uncle to campaign on behalf of the Whig party in local county elections. In return for this, Sterne received ecclesiastical preferment, becoming a prebendary (recipient of a stipend given to a member of the clergy) of York Minster.

Marrying Elizabeth Lumley in 1741, Sterne added the living of Stillington to his ministerial duties and lived a relatively quiet life in Yorkshire until 1759, when he published his first imaginative prose, A Political Romance (also known as The History of a Good Warm Watch Coat ). This satire on local ecclesiastical courts included uncomplimentary and thinly veiled portraits of Minster clergy and was ordered by the archbishop of York to be burned.

In the same year, and with more success, Sterne also published the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy. This serialized novel tells the life story of its eponymous hero, beginning with the exact time of his conception, and including long, often absurd or bawdy, digressions about his family, especially his flamboyant father Walter and his soldier brother Toby. Volumes 3 and 4 were published in 1761, 7 and 8 in 1765, and the last volume, 9, in 1767. In the final volume, a conversation between Tristram's mother and the parson Yorick about Walter's bull seems to sum up the entire story inadvertently: "'L-d!' said my mother, 'what is all this story about?'—'A COCK and a BULL,' said Yorick—'And one of the best of its kind I ever heard."' When Sterne visited London in 1759, shortly after the first two volumes had gone on sale, he discovered that his novel was an immediate success and had sold out at the booksellers. Declaring that he wrote "not [to] be fed, but to be Famous," Sterne nevertheless capitalized on his success with Tristram Shandy by persuading his London bookseller to publish a selection of his sermons in 1760.

With his literary reputation established and his financial position secure, in 1762 Sterne headed for France and Italy. For many years, Sterne's wife Elizabeth had suffered from mental illness (at her worst, she believed herself to be the queen of Bohemia); Sterne had suffered with consumption (tuberculosis) since his days at Cambridge, and the trip to Europe was hoped to be beneficial for both. Finally returning to London in 1767, Sterne began an affair with Elizabeth Draper, the wife of an official in the East India Company. When she was forced to move to India with her husband, Sterne began his Journal to Eliza (also called the Bramine's Journal ), which he kept for six months, and which was discovered in 1851. In 1768, Sterne published his next, and final, novel, A Sentimental Journey in France and Italy, which drew on his own experiences of touring in Europe and resurrected the impulsive parson, Yorick, from Tristram Shandy, as its protagonist. As with Tristram Shandy, which satirized the conventions of the contemporary "Life of . . ." narrative (or novel), A Sentimental Journey satirized the conventions of travel writing by claiming to be a journal of a grand tour (a tour of the Continent traditionally undertaken by young Englishmen) and "a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of NATURE," with comic, and famously bawdy, encounters.

As the author of Tristram Shandy, Sterne is credited with being the originator of the "streamof-consciousness" novel, influencing modern authors Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in particular. Even in its day, this book was celebrated because it brought a new level of consciousness to the developing novel by satirizing the manipulation of fact for the purpose of fiction, and by casting comic doubt on the idea of capturing a life in writing. In his own life, Sterne also trod a fine line between fact and fiction, living in "Shandy Hall" and writing to friends under the name of "Yorick." A month after the publication of A Sentimental Journey, Sterne died in his lodgings in London; the Journal to Eliza was published for the first time in 1904.

See also Burney, Frances ; Defoe, Daniel ; English Literature and Language ; Fielding, Henry ; Richardson, Samuel ; Smollett, Tobias .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Sterne, Laurence. Letters of Laurence Sterne. Edited by Perry Lewis Curtis. Oxford, 1935.

——. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Edited by Ian Campbell Ross. Oxford and New York, 1983; rev. ed., 2000.

——. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy with The Journal to Eliza and A Political Romance. Edited by Ian Jack. Oxford and New York, 1968; repr. 1984.

——. The Sermons of Laurence Sterne. Edited by Melvyn News. 2 vols. Volumes 4 (text) and 5 (notes) of the Florida Edition of Laurence Sterne. Gainesville, Fla., 1996.