The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Tristram Shandy is one of the funniest novels in the English language. It’s also one of the first great experimental literary works * Independent *A mad, recursive, literary joke * Daily Telegraph *An extraordinary comic tour de force * Guardian *The ultimate novel about writing a novel * Sunday Telegraph *An amazing book, seeming like a modern experimental novel but written in the 18th century by an Anglican clergyman. You can dip in and out of it with constant pleasure. – Bamber Gasgoigne * Daily Express *Has inspired and provoked writers as various as Dickens, Joyce and Salman Rushdie * Observer *Tristram Shandy’s open, digressive form offers both an alternative to the inevitable reductions of plot and a foil to the tyranny of the will to system. * New Statesman *

Laurence Sterne was born in 1713, the younger son of a landowning Yorkshire family. He studied at Jesus College, Cambridge and was ordained in 1738. Sterne’s dramas were mostly personal, including bitter quarrels with his wife and uncle, and some high profile affairs. The publication of the first volumes of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy in 1759 made him famous throughout Europe overnight. He went on to complete the remaining volumes over the next seven years. Sterne died in 1768 of tuberculosis, the condition that had dogged him for many years.

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