The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

- By Laurence Sterne
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Anglo-Irish writer and cleric (1713–1768) "Laurence Stern" redirects here. For the American journalist, see Laurence Stern (journalist). The ReverendLaurence SternePortrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1760Born(1713-11-24)24 November 1713Clonmel, IrelandDied18 March 1768(1768-03-18) (aged 54)London, EnglandOccupationNovelist, clergymanNationalityBritishAlma materJesus College, CambridgeNotable worksThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, GentlemanA Sentimental Journey Through France and ItalyA Political RomanceSpouseElizabeth Lumley Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published sermons and memoirs, and indulged in local politics. He grew up in a military family, travelling mainly in Ireland but briefly in England. An uncle paid for Sterne to attend Hipperholme Grammar School in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as Sterne's father was ordered to Jamaica, where he died of malaria some years later. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge on a sizarship, gaining bachelor's and master's degrees. While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741. His ecclesiastical satire A Political Romance infuriated the church and was burnt. With his new talent for writing, he published early volumes of his best-known novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Sterne travelled to France to find relief from persistent tuberculosis, documenting his travels in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published weeks before his death. His posthumous Journal to Eliza addresses Eliza Draper, for whom he had romantic feelings. Sterne died in 1768 and was buried in the yard of St George's, Hanover Square. His body was said to have been stolen after burial and sold to anatomists at Cambridge University, but was recognised and reinterred. His ostensible skull was found in the churchyard and transferred to Coxwold in 1969 by the Laurence Sterne Trust. Biography[edit] Early life and education[edit] Plaque in memory of Sterne in the town walls of Clonmel Laurence Sterne by Joseph Nollekens, 1766, National Portrait Gallery, London 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] His great-grandfather Richard Sterne had been the Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as the Archbishop of York.[3] Roger Sterne was the youngest son of Richard Sterne's youngest son, and consequently, Roger Sterne inherited little of Richard Sterne's wealth.[3] Roger Sterne left his family and enlisted in the army at the age of 25; he enlisted uncommissioned, which was unusual for someone from a family of high social position. Despite being promoted to an officer, he was of the lowest commission and lacked financial resources.[4] Roger Sterne married Agnes Hobert, the widow of a military captain.[5] Agnes was "born in Flanders but...was in fact Anglo-Irish and lived for much of her life in Ireland".[6] The first decade of Laurence Sterne's life was spent from place to place, as his father was regularly reassigned to a new (usually Irish) garrison. "Other than a three-year stint in a Dublin townhouse, the Sternes never lived anywhere for more than a year between Laurence's birth and his departure for boarding school in England a few months shy of his eleventh birthday. Besides Clonmel and Dublin, the Sternes also lived in Wicklow Town; Annamoe, County Wicklow; Drogheda, County Louth; Castlepollard, County Westmeath; Carrickfergus, County Antrim; and Derry City."[7] In 1724, "shortly before the family's arrival in Derry",[8] Roger took Sterne to his wealthy brother, Richard, so that Laurence could attend Hipperholme Grammar School near Halifax.[9] Laurence never saw his father again as Roger was ordered to Jamaica where he died of malaria in 1731.[10] Laurence was admitted to a sizarship at Jesus College, in July 1733 at the age of 20.[11] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in January 1737 and returned in the summer of 1740 to be awarded his Master of Arts.[12] Early career[edit] Sterne was ordained as a deacon on 6 March 1737[13] and as a priest on 20 August 1738.[14] His religion is said to have been the "centrist Anglicanism of his time", known as "latitudinarianism".[15] A few days after his ordination as a priest, Sterne was awarded the vicarage living of Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire.[16] Sterne married Elizabeth Lumley on 30 March 1741, despite both being ill with consumption.[17] 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.[18] He was also a prebendary of York Minster.[19] 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,[20] and urged Sterne to begin a career of political journalism, which resulted in some scandal for Sterne and a terminal falling-out between the two men.[21] This falling out occurred after Laurence ended his political career in 1742. He had previously written anonymous propaganda for the York Gazetteer from 1741 to 1742. [22] Sterne lived in Sutton for 20 years, during which time he kept up an intimacy 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.[23] Writing[edit] Shandy Hall, Sterne's home in Coxwold, North Yorkshire Sterne wrote a religious satire work called A Political Romance in 1759. Many copies of his work were destroyed.[24] According to a 1760 anonymous letter, Sterne "hardly knew that he could write at all, much less with humour so as to make his reader laugh".[25] 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.[26] He wrote as fast as he possibly could, composing the first 18 chapters between January and March of 1759.[27] Due to his poor financial position, Sterne was forced to borrow money for the printing of his novel, suggesting that Sterne was confident in the prospective commercial success of his work and that the local critical reception of the novel was favourable enough to justify the loan.[28] 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."[29] He spent part of each year in London, being fêted as new volumes appeared. Even after the publication of volumes three and four of Tristram Shandy, his 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."[30] Baron Fauconberg rewarded Sterne by appointing him as the perpetual curate of Coxwold, North Yorkshire in March 1760.[31] In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, the composer and former slave Ignatius Sancho wrote to Sterne,[32] encouraging him to use his pen to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade.[33] In July 1766, Sterne received Sancho's letter shortly after he had finished writing a conversation between his fictional characters Corporal Trim and his brother Tom in Tristram Shandy, wherein Tom described the oppression of a black servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon that he had visited.[34] Sterne's widely publicised response to Sancho's letter became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature.[34] Foreign travel[edit] Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years' War and France in the Seven Years' War Sterne painted in watercolour by French artist Louis Carrogis Carmontelle, c. 1762 Sterne continued to struggle with his illness and 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. Aspects of this trip to France were incorporated into Sterne's second novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.[35] Eliza[edit] 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.[36] He was quickly captivated by Eliza's charm, vivacity, and intelligence, and she did little to discourage his attentions.[37][38] 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 the relationship, though platonic, 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.[39] Death[edit] 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.[40] He was buried in the churchyard of St George's, Hanover Square on 22 March.[41] 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[42][43] 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.[44][45] The skull was held up to be his, albeit with "a certain area of doubt".[46] Along with nearby skeletal bones, these remains were transferred to Coxwold churchyard in 1969 by the Laurence Sterne Trust.[47][48][49] The story of the reinterment of Sterne's skull in Coxwold is alluded to in Malcolm Bradbury's novel To the Hermitage.[50] Works[edit] First editions of Tristram Shandy, 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.[51] Sterne's early works were letters; he had two sermons published (in 1747 and 1750) and tried his hand at satire.[52] He was involved in and wrote about local politics in 1742.[52] His major publication prior to Tristram Shandy was the satire A Political Romance (1759), aimed at conflicts of interest within York Minster.[52] A posthumously published piece on the art of preaching, A Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais, appears to have been written in 1759.[53] 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.[54][55] Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman sold widely in England and throughout Europe.[56] Translations of the work began to appear in all the major European languages almost immediately upon its publication, and Sterne influenced European writers as diverse as Denis Diderot[57] and the German Romanticists.[58] 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.[59] English writer and literary critic Samuel Johnson's verdict in 1776 was that "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last."[60] This is strikingly different from the views of 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".[52] Swedish translator Johan Rundahl described Sterne as an arch-sentimentalist.[61] The title page to volume one includes a short Greek epigraph, which in English reads: "Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men."[62] Before the novel properly begins, Sterne also offers a dedication to Lord William Pitt.[63] He urges Pitt to retreat with the book from the cares of statecraft.[64] 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.[65][66] 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.[52] 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 contemporary writers such as Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace.[67] Italo Calvino referred to Tristram Shandy as the "undoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century".[67] The Russian Formalist writer Viktor Shklovsky regarded Tristram Shandy as the archetypal, quintessential novel, "the most typical novel of world literature."[68] However, the leading critical opinions of Tristram Shandy tend to be markedly polarised in their evaluations of its significance. 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.[69] 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.[70] Although the story is more straightforward, A Sentimental Journey is interpreted by critics as part of the same artistic project to which Tristram Shandy belongs.[71] 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.[72] The sermons, however, are conventional in substance.[73] Several volumes of letters were published after his death, as was Journal to Eliza.[74] These collections of letters, more sentimental than humorous, tell of Sterne's relationship with Eliza Draper.[75] Publications[edit] 1743 – The Unknown World: Verses Occasioned by Hearing a Pass-Bell (disputed, possibly written by Hubert Stogdon)[76] 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)[77] See also[edit] List of abolitionist forerunners List of Irish writers Citations[edit] ^ Keymer 2009, p. xii. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 20–21. ^ a b Ross 2001, pp. 22–23. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 23–24. ^ Ross 2001, p. 24. ^ Clare 2016, pp. 16. ^ Clare 2016, pp. 16–17. ^ Clare 2016, pp. 17. ^ Ross 2001, p. 33. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 29–30. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 36–37. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 43–44. ^ "Laurence Sterne's holy orders". British Library. Retrieved 7 February 2020. ^ Sichel 1971, p. 27. ^ "Laurence Sterne". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26412. Retrieved 28 March 2017. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) ^ Ross 2001, pp. 48–49. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 58–60. ^ Cross 1909, p. 54. ^ Cross 1909, p. 37. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 45–47. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 64–70, 168–174. ^ Keymer 2009, pp. 6–7. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 41–42; Vapereau 1876, p. 1915 ^ Ross 2001, pp. 190–196. ^ Howes 1971, p. 60. ^ "Cross (1908), chap. 8, The Publication of Tristram Shandy: Volumes I and II, p.197 ^ Cross (1908), chap. 8, The Publication of Tristram Shandy: Volumes I and II, p. 178. ^ Ross 2001, p. 213. ^ Fanning, Christopher. "Sterne and print culture". The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne: 125–141. ^ The Letters of Laurence Sterne: Part One, 1739–1764. University Press of Florida. 2009. pp. 129–130. ISBN 978-0813032368. ^ Howes 1971, p. 55. ^ Carey, Brycchan (March 2003). "The extraordinary Negro': Ignatius Sancho, Joseph Jekyll, and the Problem of Biography" (PDF). Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. 26 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1111/j.1754-0208.2003.tb00257.x. Retrieved 8 January 2013. ^ Phillips, Caryl (December 1996). "Director's Forward". Ignatius Sancho: an African Man of Letters. London: National Portrait Gallery. p. 12. ^ a b "Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne" (PDF). Norton. ^ The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1985. pp. 256–257. ISBN 0852294239. ^ Ross 2001, p. 360. ^ Ross 2001, p. 361 ^ Sterne, Laurence. "The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Journal to Eliza and Various letters". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 10 February 2020. ^ Sclater, William Lutley (1922). Sterne's Eliza; some account of her life in India: with her letters written between 1757 and 1774. London: W. Heinemann. pp. 45–58. ^ Ross 2001, p. 415. ^ Ross 2001, p. 419. ^ Arnold, Catherine (2008). Necropolis: London and Its Dead. Simon and Schuster. p. contents. ISBN 978-1847394934. Retrieved 11 November 2014 – via Google Books. ^ Ross 2001, pp. 419–420 ^ "Is this the skull of Sterne?". The Times. 5 June 1969. ^ Loftis, Kellar & Ulevich 2018, pp. 220, 227 ^ Loftis, Kellar & Ulevich 2018, p. 220. ^ Green, Carole (13 March 2009). "Laurence Sterne". BBC. Retrieved 4 March 2020. ^ "Laurence Sterne and the Laurence Sterne Trust". The Laurence Sterne Trust. Laurence Sterne Trust. Retrieved 4 March 2020. ^ 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. ProQuest 757935757. ^ New 1972, p. 1083. ^ a b c d e Washington 2017, p. 333. ^ New 1972, pp. 1083–1091. ^ Huntington Brown (1967), Rabelais in English literature pp. 190–191. ^ Cross (1908), chap. 8, The Publication of Tristram Shandy: Volumes I and II, p. 179. ^ Cash 1975, p. 296. ^ Cash 1975, p. 139. ^ Large 2017, p. 294. ^ Barbosa 1992, p. 28. ^ James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson…, ed. Malone, vol. II (London: 1824) p. 422. ^ de Voogd & Neubauer 2004, p. 118. ^ Pierce & de Voogd 1996, p. 15. ^ King 1995, p. 293. ^ Havard 2014, p. 586. ^ Descargues-Grant 2006 ^ Graham, Thomas (17 June 2019). "The best comic novel ever written?". BBC. Retrieved 26 February 2020. ^ a b Washington 2017, p. 334. ^ Gratchev & Mancing 2019, p. 139. ^ Jefferson 1951; Keymer 2002, pp. 4–11 ^ Viviès 1994, pp. 246–247. ^ Line, Anne. "Two Englishmen in France: A Comparison of Laurence Sterne's Book 7 of "Tristram Shandy" and "A Sentimental Journey"". University of Oslo Research Archive. University of Oslo. Retrieved 28 February 2020. ^ Ross 2001, p. 245. ^ Pfister 2001, p. 26. ^ Keymer 2009, p. xv. ^ Pfister 2001, p. 15. ^ New, Melvyn (2011). "'The Unknown World': The Poem Laurence Sterne Did Not Write". Huntington Library Quarterly. 74 (1): 85–98. doi:10.1525/hlq.2011.74.1.85. JSTOR 10.1525/hlq.2011.74.1.85. ^ Sterne, Laurence (1851). Works of Laurence Sterne. Bohn. References[edit] 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. JSTOR 44366842. S2CID 201767984. Cash, Arthur H. (1975). Laurence Sterne: The Early & Middle Years. London: Methuen & Co. ISBN 041682210X. Clare, David (2016). "Under-regarded Roots: The Irish References in Sterne's Tristram Shandy". The Irish Review. 52 (1): 15–26. ISBN 9781782050629. Cross, Wilbur L. (1909). The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne. New York: The Macmillan Company. p. 53. Retrieved 10 February 2020. Laurence Sterne Stillington Rev. Richard Levett. Descargues-Grant, Madeleine (2006). "The Obstetrics of Tristram Shandy". Études anglaises. 59 (4): 401–413. doi:10.3917/etan.594.0401. de Voogd, Peter; Neubauer, John, eds. (2004). The Reception of Laurence Sterne in Europe. London: Thoemmes Continuum. ISBN 0826461344. Retrieved 26 February 2020. Gratchev, Slav N.; Mancing, Howard, eds. (2019). Viktor Shklovsky's Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy. Lanham: Lexington Books. ISBN 9781498597937. Retrieved 26 February 2020. Havard, John Owen (Summer 2014). "Arbitrary Government: "Tristram Shandy" and the Crisis of Whig History". ELH. 81 (2): 585–613. doi:10.1353/elh.2014.0015. JSTOR 24475634. S2CID 154424358. Howes, Alan B., ed. (1971). Laurence Sterne: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415134250. Retrieved 10 February 2020. Jefferson, D.W. (July 1951). "Tristram Shandy and the Tradition of Learned Wit". Essays in Criticism. I (3): 225–248. doi:10.1093/eic/I.3.225. Retrieved 26 February 2020. Keymer, Thomas (2009). The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521849722. Keymer, Thomas (2002). Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199245924. King, Ross (Summer 1995). ""Tristram Shandy" and the Wound of Language". Studies in Philosophy. 92 (3): 291–310. JSTOR 4174520. Large, Duncan (2017). "'Lorenz Sterne' among German philosophers: reception and influence" (PDF). Textual Practice. 31 (2): 283–297. doi:10.1080/0950236X.2016.1228847. S2CID 171978531. Loftis, Sonya Freeman; Kellar, Allison; Ulevich, Lisa, eds. (2018). Shakespeare's Hamlet in an Era of Textual Exhaustion. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781315265537. Retrieved 4 March 2020. New, Melvyn (October 1972). "Sterne's Rabelaisian Fragment: A Text from the Holograph Manuscript". PMLA. 87 (5): 1083–1092. doi:10.2307/461185. JSTOR 461185. S2CID 163743375. Pfister, Manfred (2001). Laurence Sterne. Devon: Northcote House Publishers. ISBN 074630837X. Pierce, David; de Voogd, Peter, eds. (1996). Laurence Sterne in Modernism and Postmodernism. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 9042000023. Retrieved 26 February 2020. Ross, Ian Campbell (2001). Laurence Sterne: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192122355. Sichel, Walter (1971). Sterne: A Study. New York: Haskell House Publishers. Retrieved 7 February 2020. Vapereau, Gustave (1876). Dictionnaire universal des littératures. Paris: Librairie Hachette. p. 1915. Retrieved 10 February 2020. Venn, John; Venn, J.A., eds. (1927). Alumni Cantabrigienses. London: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 10 February 2020. Viviès, Jean (1994). "A Sentimental Journey, or Reading Rewarded" (PDF). Bulletin de la société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. 38. Retrieved 12 February 2020. Washington, Ellis (2017). The Progressive Revolution: History of Liberal Fascism through the Ages. Lanham: Hamilton Books. ISBN 9780761868507. Retrieved 26 February 2020. Further reading[edit] René Bosch, Labyrinth of Digressions: Tristram Shandy as Perceived and Influenced by Sterne's Early Imitators (Amsterdam, 2007) W. M. Thackeray, in English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1853; new edition, New York, 1911) Percy Fitzgerald, Life of Laurence Sterne (London, 1864; second edition, London, 1896) Paul Stapfer, Laurence Sterne, sa personne et ses ouvrages (second edition, Paris, 1882) H. D. Traill, Laurence Sterne, "English Men of Letters", (London, 1882) H. D. Traill. "Sterne". Harper & Brothers Publishers. Retrieved 22 March 2018 – via Internet Archive. Texte, Rousseau et le cosmopolitisme littôraire au XVIIIème siècle (Paris, 1895) H. W. Thayer, Laurence Sterne in Germany (New York, 1905) P. E. More, Shelburne Essays (third series, New York, 1905) L. S. Benjamin, Life and Letters (two volumes, 1912) Rousseau, George S. (2004). Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-3454-1 External links[edit] Wikimedia Commons has media related to Laurence Sterne. Wikiquote has quotations related to Laurence Sterne. Wikisource has original works by or about:Laurence Sterne Works by Laurence Sterne in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Laurence Sterne at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Laurence Sterne at Internet Archive Works by Laurence Sterne at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Tristram Shandy (beta) In Our Time – BBC Radio 4 Laurence Sterne at the Google Books Search Laurence Sterne at Curlie "Tristram Shandy". Annotated, with bibliography, criticism. Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: The Scrapbook Mind of Laurence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy & A Sentimental Journey. Munich: Edited by Günter Jürgensmeier, 2005 The Shandean: A Journal Devoted to the Works of Laurence Sterne (tables of contents available online) Laurence Sterne at the National Portrait Gallery, London The Laurence Sterne Trust Laurence Sterne at Library of Congress, with 182 library catalogue records Anonymous parodies of the kinds of letters written by Elizabeth Draper to Laurence Sterne (as Yorick), MSS SC 4, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University Authority control databases International FAST ISNI VIAF National Norway Chile Spain France BnF data Catalonia Germany Italy Israel Belgium United States Sweden Latvia Japan Czech Republic Australia Greece Korea Croatia Netherlands Poland Portugal Vatican Academics CiNii Artists MusicBrainz ULAN People Ireland Deutsche Biographie Trove Other RISM SNAC IdRef
Chapter 1.I.
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;-that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;-and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;-Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,-I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.-Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;-you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.-and a great deal to that purpose:-Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a half-penny matter,-away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.
Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?-Good G..! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,-Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?-Nothing.
Chapter 1.II.
-Then, positively, there is nothing in the question that I can see, either good or bad.-Then, let me tell you, Sir, it was a very unseasonable question at least,-because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the Homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception.
The Homunculus, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;-to the eye of reason in scientific research, he stands confess'd-a Being guarded and circumscribed with rights.-The minutest philosophers, who by the bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being inversely as their enquiries) shew us incontestably, that the Homunculus is created by the same hand,-engender'd in the same course of nature,-endow'd with the same loco-motive powers and faculties with us:-That he consists as we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humours, and articulations;-is a Being of as much activity,-and in all senses of the word, as much and as truly our fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor of England.-He may be benefitted,-he may be injured,-he may obtain redress; in a word, he has all the claims and rights of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorf, or the best ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and relation.
Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way alone!-or that through terror of it, natural to so young a traveller, my little Gentleman had got to his journey's end miserably spent;-his muscular strength and virility worn down to a thread;-his own animal spirits ruffled beyond description,-and that in this sad disorder'd state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months together.-I tremble to think what a foundation had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights.
Chapter 1.III.
To my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle Toby well remember'd, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity, (as he call'd it) in my manner of setting up my top, and justifying the principles upon which I had done it,-the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach,-he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me, That I should neither think nor act like any other man's child:-But alas! continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling down his cheeks, My Tristram's misfortunes began nine months before ever he came into the world.
-My mother, who was sitting by, look'd up, but she knew no more than her backside what my father meant,-but my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy, who had been often informed of the affair,-understood him very well.
Chapter 1.IV.
I know there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in it, who are no readers at all,-who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of every thing which concerns you.
It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I have been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men whatever,-be no less read than the Pilgrim's Progress itself-and in the end, prove the very thing which Montaigne dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;-I find it necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in it, as Horace says, ab Ovo.
Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;-(I forget which,) besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon;-for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man's rules that ever lived.
To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, 'tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.
-Shut the door.- I was begot in the night betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in the month of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I was.-But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better clearing up this point.
My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of --, was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether 'twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life,-on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year,-as certain as ever the Sunday-night came,-to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:-And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of,-he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.
It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up,-but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head-& vice versa:-Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious Locke, who certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever.
But this by the bye. Now it appears by a memorandum in my father's pocket-book, which now lies upon the table, 'That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the same month in which I date my geniture,-my father set upon his journey to London, with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster school;' and, as it appears from the same authority, 'That he did not get down to his wife and family till the second week in May following,'-it brings the thing almost to a certainty. However, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of a doubt.
-But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and February?-Why, Madam,-he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica.
Chapter 1.V.
On the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the aera fixed on, was as near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,-was I Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours.-I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,-which, o' my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest;-not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could any how contrive to be called up to public charges, and employments of dignity or power;-but that is not my case;-and therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;-for which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made;-for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got in scating against the wind in Flanders;-I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil;-yet with all the good temper in the world I affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.
Chapter 1.VI.
In the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly when I was born; but I did not inform you how. No, that particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;-besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.
-You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed farther with me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.-O diem praeclarum!-then nothing which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling. Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out-bear with me,-and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:-Or, if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,-or should sometimes put on a fool's cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,-don't fly off,-but rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;-and as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing,-only keep your temper.

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Word Lists:

Obliquity :

Virility : (in a man) the quality of having strength, energy, and a strong sex drive; manliness

Transfuse : transfer (blood or its components) from one person or animal to another

Misadventure : an unfortunate incident; a mishap

Inverse : opposite or contrary in position, direction, order, or effect

Articulation : the formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech

Pester : trouble or annoy (someone) with frequent or persistent requests or interruptions

Clutter : crowd (something) untidily; fill with clutter

Circumscribe : restrict (something) within limits

Ligament : a short band of tough, flexible fibrous connective tissue which connects two bones or cartilages or holds together a joint.

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Additional Information:

Rating: Words in the Passage: 2415 Unique Words: 827 Sentences: 60
Noun: 631 Conjunction: 269 Adverb: 147 Interjection: 5
Adjective: 131 Pronoun: 285 Verb: 376 Preposition: 317
Letter Count: 10,043 Sentiment: Positive Tone: Neutral (Slightly Conversational) Difficult Words: 467
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