The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [12]
25. Martin Price, To the Palace of Wisdom: Studies in Order and Energy from Dryden to Blake (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1965), 333–34.
26. Relevant here, though they have different aims from mine, are Howard Anderson, “A Version of Pastoral: Class and Society in Tristram Shandy,” SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 7 (1967), 509–29; and Lanham, whose emphasis on games and pleasure often suggests childhood and innocence.
27. Gardner Stout, whose edition of A Sentimental Journey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) was the standard edition until the Florida Edition volume appeared in 2002, notes the ambiguous ending, 291 n. William Holtz’s “Typography, Tristram Shandy, the Aposiopesis, etc.,” in The Winged Skull, 247–57, touches on a number of pertinent matters. See also Holtz’s Image and Immortality: A Study of Tristram Shandy (Providence: Brown University Press, 1970).
28.The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 2:269.
CHRONOLOGY
For a full account see Cash or Ross (Selected Readings). Sterne’s title pages often bear the date of the year following their actual publication.
1713 Laurence Sterne, great-grandson of an archbishop of York, born November 24 to Roger Sterne, ensign in the infantry, and Agnes Hebert, a widow, in Clonmel, Ireland.
1723 Sent to school at Hipperholme, near Halifax. His uncle Richard lived close by at Woodhouse.
1731 Death of father in Jamaica.
1733 Enters Jesus College, Cambridge, on a scholarship (sizar). Onset of tuberculosis.
1737 B.A. (January); took holy orders as a deacon of the Church of England.
1738 Ordained priest; becomes vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, north of York.
1740 M.A.
1741 Becomes prebendary (canon) of York Minster; marries Elizabeth Lumley; publishes political writings at the behest of his powerful uncle Jaques Sterne, precentor of York and archdeacon of Cleveland.
1743 Preferred to the vicarage of Stillington, a second “living.”
1747 Daughter, Lydia, born (December 1).
1750 Preaches and publishes The Abuses of Conscience, which would later appear in volume II of Tristram Shandy.
1751 Commissary (judge) of the Peculiar Court of Pickering and Pocklington, a spiritual court.
1759 A Political Romance published, suppressed, and burned. Tristram Shandy (volumes I and II) published in York at the end of December after being turned down by Robert Dodsley, the London publisher of Pope and Johnson. Death of his mother and his uncle Jaques. Nervous breakdown of Elizabeth.
1760 James Dodsley (now in charge of R. and J. Dodsley) publishes the second edition of the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy (April 3) and The Sermons of Mr. Yorick (in May with a dual title page: Sermons of Laurence Sterne). Stays in London for several months and is painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Presented with a third Yorkshire parish, Coxwold (“Shandy Hall”; now a Sterne museum), by Lord Fauconberg.
1761 Tristram Shandy volumes III and IV, published by Dodsley (January), and V and VI (December 22), published by Thomas Becket and P. A. Dehondt, who would remain his publishers for the rest of his life.
1762 Travels to France, for his health. Wife and daughter settle there.
1764 Returns to England in June.
1765 Tristram Shandy volumes VII and VIII published (January). The Sermons of Mr. Yorick volumes III and IV published (October). Trip to France and Italy.
1766 Returns to England in June.
1767 Ninth volume of Tristram Shandy published. Falls in love with Eliza Draper (1744–78), an unhappily married woman, the recipient of the letter series known as the Journal to Eliza or Continuation of the Bramine’s Journal, unpublished in his lifetime.
1768 First two volumes of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, by Mr. Yorick published February 27 with two more promised “early the next winter.” Dies in London on March 18. Three more volumes of Sermons (1769) and his heavily edited letters (1775) appeared posthumously.
SELECTED READINGS
This bibliography gathers a