Laurence Sterne

British novelist and essayist

• Born: November 24, 1713
• Birthplace: Clonmel, Ireland
• Died: March 18, 1768
• Place of death: London, England

Biography

Laurence Sterne, one of the most delightfully eccentric of English novelists, was born in Clonmel, Ireland, on November 24, 1713, the son of an Irish woman and an ensign in the English army whose regiment had just been transferred to Ireland from Dunkirk. Though his parentage was undistinguished, Sterne’s father came from an old family in Yorkshire, where a great-grandfather had been an archbishop. A childhood spent in the rigors of camp-following undoubtedly had a harmful effect on the novelist’s frail constitution, but the experience provided him with details of barracks life and campaign reminiscences that ultimately enriched his great novel with such authentic creations as Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim.

Between 1723 and 1731, the year of his father’s death, Sterne was in school at Halifax, Yorkshire. In 1733, after two years of idleness at Elvington, he was enrolled as a sizar in Jesus College, Cambridge, through the grudging benevolence of relatives. At Cambridge he indulged in the easy, convivial university life of the time. He discovered an incapacity for mathematics and a contempt for formal logic. Nevertheless, he did considerable reading, developing a deep admiration for John Locke (1632-1704), whose philosophy was to be the most important single influence on his thinking. He also formed a close friendship with John Hall-Stevenson, later the hypochondriac author of Crazy Tales (1762). Cambridge granted Sterne a B.A. in 1737 and an M.A. in 1740.

As a matter of expediency rather than religious conviction, he took holy orders. He was ordained deacon in 1737 and inducted into the vicarage of Sutton on the Forest in 1738. Two years later he received a prebendal stall in the York Cathedral. In 1744 he acquired the parish of Stillington, near Sutton.

In 1741, after a sentimental courtship, he married Elizabeth Lumley. A daughter, Lydia, was born in 1747. The Sternes, however, were never really compatible. Elizabeth was said to be ill-tempered, a condition certainly not improved by her husband’s interests in other women. Yet, although Sterne was not averse to paying attention to other women, his philandering was probably chiefly sentimental—as was, for example, his affair with Catherine (“Kitty”) Fourmantelle, a singer from London who came to York in 1759.

In Sutton, Sterne spent twenty years of relative obscurity, serving two parishes with some conscientiousness, unsuccessfully farming his glebe, and making occasional trips to York to preach his turn in the cathedral or to dabble in diocesan politics. He found amusement in hunting, skating, fiddling, and painting, as well as in social gatherings at Newburgh Priory, the seat of Lord Fauconberg, and in the ribald carousals of the “Demoniacks” at Hall-Stevenson’s Skelton Castle. He later immortalized his role of “heteroclite parson” in his portrait of Yorick.

In 1759 his participation in local church politics produced a satire called A Political Romance (later renamed The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat). Though all but a few copies were burned to prevent embarrassment to the diocese, its success among Sterne’s friends gave him the impetus to embark on Tristram Shandy, the first two volumes of which came out in York in December of the same year. Introduced to London through the enthusiasm of the actorDavid Garrick, the novel so impressed the capital with its whimsicality, eccentric humor, and indecorum that it was immediately successful. In fact, when Sterne journeyed to London in the spring of 1760, he found himself a social lion. Never had the city seen such a witty, hedonistic priest, whose lustrous eyes and ebulliently secular conversation so enchantingly belied his black garb, pale face, thin body, and hollow chest.

However, disapprobation soon followed success. Literary men such as Horace Walpole (1717-1797), Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774), and Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) condemned the book for various evils ranging from tediousness to indecency, and a flood of hostile articles, pamphlets, and bad imitations poured from the press. When the author brought out the first two volumes of The Sermons of Mr. Yorick in 1760, the comminatory chorus grew.

Returning to Yorkshire, Sterne received from Lord Fauconberg the living of Coxwold, to which “sweet retirement” he moved his family. Here for the rest of his life his home was a rambling gabled house that he called Shandy Hall. In January, 1761, he was again in London to see two more volumes of Tristram Shandy published. Though the critical reception was now unfavorable, the books sold well. Sterne returned to Coxwold, completed two more volumes, and was back in November for their publication. This time his reputation soared again. The story of Le Fever, Trim’s animadversions on death, and Uncle Toby’s campaigns had won near-universal applause.

Weakened by a serious hemorrhage from chronically weak lungs, Sterne set out for France in 1762 in a “race with death.” Recovering in Paris, he was lionized by the cream of French intellectual society. He later settled with his family in Toulouse. Back in Coxwold in 1764, he completed volumes seven and eight of Tristram Shandy, including an account of his tour through France and the affair of Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman. These came out in January, 1765. Two more volumes of sermons followed in January, 1766.

Once again on the Continent in 1766, Sterne had a “joyous” winter in France and Italy. Though hemorrhages were becoming more frequent, he returned during the year to his desk in Coxwold, and by January, 1767, he was on hand in London for the appearance of the ninth volume of Tristram Shandy. During this winter he indulged in his famous sentimental affair with Eliza Draper, the young wife of an official of the East India Company, for whom he kept the Journal to Eliza after her departure for Bombay.

Late in February, 1768, Sterne brought out A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. He could enjoy its triumphant reception only briefly, however. An attack of influenza that developed into pleurisy proved more than his disease-wracked body could bear. He died in London on March 18, 1768, and was buried at St. George’s, Hanover Square.

Sterne’s work, like his life, is marked with a refreshing unconventionality. Though the Sermons (1760-1769) lack religious conviction and originality of material, they preach a warm benevolence and a comfortable morality in a style that can be at once graceful and dramatic. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy—in which Sterne substituted his traveler’s sentimental adventures for the conventional accounts of nations, peoples, and memorable sights in travel books—is a nearly perfect small masterpiece.

The humor of Tristram Shandy is plainly in the tradition of François Rabelais (c. 1483-1553), Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), and Jonathan Swift (1667-1745); and its borrowings range from Robert Burton (1577-1640) to miscellaneous curiosa. Superficially, the novel may seem merely like an engaging hodgepodge full of tricks, including black, marbled, and blank pages, omitted chapters, unorthodox punctuation and typography, and numerous digressions. But Tristram Shandy is far from planless. By insisting on the importance of opinions about action rather than on that of action itself Sterne opened unexplored avenues into the inner lives of his characters and achieved a new architectonic principle based on the mind as Locke had illuminated it in An Essay on Human Understanding (1690). At the same time he achieved a new concept of time in fiction, a fascinating awareness of the life process itself, and a fresh concept of comedy based on the idea of individual isolation in a world where each person is a product of his own peculiar association of ideas.

Bibliography

Cash, Arthur Hill. Laurence Sterne. 2 vols. London: Methuen, 1975-1986. The definitive biography. The first volume follows Sterne’s life to early 1760 and offers many details about his role in the religious and political affairs of York. The second volume treats Sterne the author. Presents a realistic picture freed from Victorian strictures and romantic glosses. The appendices provide a series of portraits and of letters never before published.

Cash, Arthur Hill, and John M. Stedmond, eds. The Winged Skull: Papers from the Laurence Sterne Bicentenary Conference. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1971. A collection of essays on a range of subjects, including Sterne’s style, his reputation outside England, and his fictional devices. Includes some helpful illustrations.

Kraft, Elizabeth. Laurence Sterne Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996. Gives a short biography, and then devotes individual chapters to specific works. Also includes a final chapter on Sterne’s changing critical reputation as well as a selected bibliography.

Myer, Valerie Grosvenor, ed. Laurence Sterne: Riddles and Mysteries. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1984. Contains eleven essays on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., covering such matters as the nature of Sterne’s comedy, the intellectual background of the novel, and Sterne’s influence on the work of Jane Austen. Includes a brief annotated bibliography.

New, Melvin. “Tristram Shandy”: A Book for Free Spirits. New York: Twayne, 1994. After providing a literary and historical milieu for Stern’s most famous work, New explores five different methods of approaching Tristram Shandy: “Satire,” “Heads” (that is, intellectually), “Hearts” (that is, emotionally), “Joy,” and “Tartuffery” (as a humorous attack on hypocrisy).

Ross, Ian Campbell. Laurence Sterne: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. A well-researched biography that concentrates on the events of Sterne’s life rather than literary analysis of the works.

Stedmond, John M. The Comic Art of Laurence Sterne: Convention and Innovation in “Tristram Shandy” and “A Sentimental Journey.” Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. Sterne’s novels highlight the comic distance between aspiration and attainment that is endemic in human existence. Provides helpful readings of the novels and an appendix recording Sterne’s direct borrowings.

Walsh, Marcus, ed. Laurence Sterne. New York: Longman, 2002. Sterne’s works are particularly amenable to post-structuralist interpretation; this collection pulls together a stimulating group of essays that take theoretical approaches to the work.