Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne | |
---|---|
Born | Clonmel, Ireland | 24 November 1713
Died | 18 March 1768 London, England | (aged 54)
Occupation | Novelist, clergyman |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | Jesus College, Cambridge |
Notable works | The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy A Political Romance |
Spouse | Elizabeth Lumley |
Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an
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
Biography
Early life and education
Sterne was born in
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
Early career
Sterne was ordained as a
Writing
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
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
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
Less than a month after Sentimental Journey was published, Sterne died in his lodgings at 41
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
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
English writer and
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.
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
- 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
Citations
- ^ 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.
- 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.
- ISBN 978-0813032368.
- ^ Howes 1971, p. 55.
- . 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.
- 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.
- 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"
- 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.
- JSTOR 10.1525/hlq.2011.74.1.85.
- ^ Sterne, Laurence (1851). Works of Laurence Sterne. Bohn.
References
- Barbosa, Maria José Somerlate (May 1992). "Sterne and Machado: Parodic and Intertextual Play in 'Tristram Shandy' and 'Memórias'". The Comparatist. 16: 24–48. S2CID 201767984.
- 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. .
- 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. 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. . 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. 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. 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
- 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
- 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