Laurence Sterne A Life

by Ross, Ian Campbell

• ISBN13: 9780192122353
• ISBN10: 0192122355
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-06-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Laurence Sterne was in his mid-forties when the publication of TristramShandy catapulted him from obscurity into unprecedented literary fame. Thestory of how a provincial clergyman became the most fashionable writer of hisday is extraordinary, and all the more remarkable for having been engineered byits subject. 'I wrote not to be fed, but to be famous', Laurence Sternedeclared of his comic masterpiece, and in order to achieve his ambition hebecame an assiduous networker, as astute a self-publicist as any modern authorcould hope to be. Shocked critics of Tristram Shandy denounced his bawdy novelas a scandal to the cloth but Sterne revelled in the celebrity his age'sobsession with novelty and fashion allowed him. He at last found compensationfor a life characterized by alternating moods of gaiety and gloom. Unhappilymarried to a woman who suffered a nervous breakdown and at one time believedherself to be the Queen of Bohemia, Sterne became notorious for his sexual andsentimental liaisons with other women. His second book, A Sentimental Journey,transmuted his experiences into literary expressions of moral feeling.Dependent for so much of his life on patrons, it was the patronage of thereading public that was to secure his livelihood. Tristram Shandy remains oneof the most innovative and influential novels in world literature, and IanCampbell Ross makes full use of important new materials to examine Sterne's lifeand career and the cult of the celebrity author.

Author Biography

Ian Campbell Ross is A Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and Senior Lecturer in English.

Table of Contents

Introduction: `Tristram is the Fashion'	1	(19)
Ireland and England, 1713--1738	20	(29)
Priest and Husband, 1738--141	49	(13)
Political Journalist, 1741--1742	62	(29)
Sutton and Stillington, 1742--1745	91	(31)
The Jacobite Rebellion, 1745--1746	122	(20)
Sutton and Stillington, 1746--1759	142	(26)
Eccelesiastical Politics, 1747--1759	168	(29)
Tristram Shandy and the Queen of Bohemia, 1759	197	(18)
Tristram Shandy and Parson Yorick, 1760	215	(35)
Coxwold and London, 1760--1761	250	(24)
France, 1762--1764	274	(36)
England, 1764--1765	310	(24)
France, Italy, and England, 1765--1767	334	(26)
London, 1767	360	(24)
Coxwold and London, 1767--1768	384	(32)
Epilogue: `Alas, poor Yorick!'	416	(17)
Notes	433	(36)
List of Works Cited	469	(10)
Index	479