Laurence Sterne was in his mid-40s when the publication of "Tristram Shandy" catapulted him from obscurity into unprecedented literary fame. The story of how a provincial clergyman became the most fashionable writer of his day is extraordinary, and all the more remarkable for having been engineered by its subject. "I wrote not to be fed, but to be famous", Laurence Sterne declared of his comic masterpiece, and in order to achieve his ambition he became an assiduous networker, as astute a self-publicist as any modern author could hope to be. Shocked critics of "Tristram Shandy" denounced his bawdy novel as a scandal to the cloth but Sterne revelled in the celebrity his age's obsession with novelty and fashion allowed him. He at last found compensation for a life characterized by alternating moods of gaiety and gloom. Unhappily married to a woman who suffered a nervous breakdown and at one time believed herself to be the Queen of Bohemia, Sterne became notorious for his sexual and sentimental liaisons with other women. His second book, "A Sentimental Journey", transmuted his experiences into literary expressions of moral feeling.
Laurence Sterne was in his mid-40s when the publication of "Tristram Shandy" catapulted him from obscurity into unprecedented literary fame. The story of how a provincial clergyman became the most fashionable writer of his day is extraordinary, and all the more remarkable for having been engineered by its subject. "I wrote not to be fed, but to be famous", Laurence Sterne declared of his comic masterpiece, and in order to achieve his ambition he became an assiduous networker, as astute a self-publicist as any modern author could hope to be. Shocked critics of "Tristram Shandy" denounced his bawdy novel as a scandal to the cloth but Sterne revelled in the celebrity his age's obsession with novelty and fashion allowed him. He at last found compensation for a life characterized by alternating moods of gaiety and gloom. Unhappily married to a woman who suffered a nervous breakdown and at one time believed herself to be the Queen of Bohemia, Sterne became notorious for his sexual and sentimental liaisons with other women. His second book, "A Sentimental Journey", transmuted his experiences into literary expressions of moral feeling.
Introduction: 'Tristram is the Fashion'
1: Ireland and England, 1713-1738
2: Priest and Husband, 1738-1741
3: Political Journalist, 1741-1742
4: Sutton and Stillington, 1742-1745
5: The Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746
6: Sutton and Stillington, 1746-1759
7: Ecclesiastical Politics, 1747-1759
8: Tristram Shandy and the Queen of Bohemia, 1759
9: Tristram Shandy and Parson Yorick, 1760
10: Coxwold and London, 1760-1761
11: France, 1762-1764
12: England, 1764-1765
13: France, Italy, and England, 1765-1767
14: London, 1767
15: Coxwold and London, 1767-1768
Epilogue: 'Alas, poor YORICK!'
Notes
List of Works Cited
Index
Ian Campbell Ross is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, where he
teaches English Literature. His publications include Public Virtue,
Public Love: The Early Years of the Dublin Lying-in Hospital (1986,
Umbria: A Cultural History (1996), Locating Swift (with Aileen
Douglas and Patrick Kelly, 1998), and editions of Laurence Sterne's
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and Henry
James's The Europeans, both
for Oxford World's Classics.
Ian Campbell Ross has produced a readable, judicious and scrupulously researched biography. Independent intelligent and highly readable biography Ian Hamilton, Sunday Telegraph
Ian Campbell Ross has produced a readable, judicious and scrupulously researched biography. Independent intelligent and highly readable biography Ian Hamilton, Sunday Telegraph
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
