Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was an Anglo-Irish author. Sterne is largely known for his novel Tristram Shandy. Though he wrote shortly before the American Revolution, Sterne's works have influenced various authors in the Modernist (such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce) and postmodernist movements.
Life[]
Born in November of 1713 in Clonmel in County Tipperary of Ireland, Sterne's father was an ensign in the English army. Throughout Laurence's childhood, he moved from home to home to follow his father's regiment. At age ten, Laurence was enrolled into the Hipperhome Grammar School (a boarding-school in Yorkshire) for around nine years. Shortly after graduating from the School, he was enrolled in Cambridge University and graduated with a B.A. in 1736.
At age thirty-five, Laurence took the duties of a clergyman in the village of Sutton-on-the-Forest (near York), where he lived for twenty years. In 1741, Sterne married a woman named Elizabeth Lumley. Throughout his relationship with Lumley, Sterne was unfaithful.
In 1759, Sterne wrote a volume known as A Political Romance, a satire of the critics of his patron John Fountayne. Shortly after its publication, most copies of the pamphlet were burned on the orders John Gilbert, the Archbishop of York (while all copies were ordered to be burnt, some survived). Despite this failure, it emboldened Laurence to write a long work known as Tristram Shandy - which he wrote and published over eight years.
During the writing of Tristram Shandy, Laurence was ill with tuberculosis and took several vacations to France and Italy on doctor's orders. Upon returning, he began a "sentimental affair" with Eliza Draper (the wife of an official in the East India Company) and wrote a series of letters to her while she was away in Bombay.
Sterne's trips to France and Italy also inspired a satirical work known as A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy which was published in 1768. This turned out to be Laurence's final work, as he dropped dead from pleurisy in March of that name.
Writing style[]
Most of Laurence Sterne's works are satirical in nature. He was a part of the later Early Modern movement within England and Tristram Shandy is frequently said to be a precursor to Postmodernism. Tristram Shandy is extremely digressionaly and frequently plays with the nature of the novel and the book in general - with some blank pages, a black page of mourning, and a marble page.
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Notable works[]
- A Political Romance (or The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat) - Sterne's first novel, a rare work as most copies of it were burned
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Sterne's most well-known work, a massive volume on the "life & opinions" of its titular character
- A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy - a satirical work and Sterne's last work published before his death
See also[]
- Henry Fielding
- Samuel Johnson
- Oliver Goldsmith