Laurence Sterne

Laurence Sterne – Life, Career, and Memorable Sayings

Delve into the life of Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), the Anglo-Irish cleric and novelist whose playful digressions in Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey revolutionized the novel form. Explore his biography, works, style, legacy, and quotations.

Introduction

Laurence Sterne (November 24, 1713 – March 18, 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican clergyman who broke conventional narrative form with humor, irony, self-referentiality, and a playful use of digression. He is best known for his two major works: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Rather than conventional plot, Sterne’s novels foreground the act of telling, the interruptions of thought, and the quirks of consciousness.

Though he died relatively young, his innovations anticipated many features of modern and postmodern literature. His style has influenced authors from the 19th century to the present, especially those who challenge narrative linearity and authorial authority.

Early Life and Family

Laurence Sterne was born on November 24, 1713 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland.

Shortly after his birth, Roger’s regiment was disbanded, and the family moved between England and Ireland in search of postings and lodgings.

Because of his father’s military duties and financial instability, Laurence’s childhood was unsettled. Around age ten, he was sent to live under the care of his uncle and to attend school in Halifax, Yorkshire (England).

His early years of movement, distance from parental stability, and exposure to disparate locales contributed to a restlessness and sensitivity that would later be evident in his writing.

Youth, Education, and Ecclesiastical Career

As a youth in England, Sterne studied classical languages and the traditional curriculum of grammar schools.

In July 1733, he was admitted to Jesus College, Cambridge as a sizar, meaning he received financial assistance in return for performing certain duties. Bachelor of Arts in January 1737 and later his Master of Arts in 1740.

He was ordained a deacon in March 1737 and a priest in August 1738. Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire, where he would reside for many years.

In 1741, Sterne married Elizabeth Lumley, in spite of her and his own frail health (both suffered from consumption). Lydia survived to childhood.

Though he served as a clergyman, Sterne had tensions with ecclesiastical expectations, especially as he began to write satire and fiction. His uncle (Jaques Sterne), a canon of York, initially supported his career, but their relationship later deteriorated partly due to controversies around Sterne’s writing.

At one point, Sterne attempted political writing (for the Whigs) and published A Political Romance (1759), a pamphlet critical of church factionalism. The work embarrassed church authorities, and nearly all copies were ordered burned.

Later, in 1760, he was appointed perpetual curate at Coxwold (North Riding, Yorkshire), which relieved him of some duties and gave him more latitude.

Literary Career & Major Works

Sterne began his notable literary output relatively late, in his mid-40s.

Tristram Shandy and Experimental Fiction

In 1759 he began publishing the first two volumes of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. nine volumes.

Tristram Shandy is famous for its digressive style: the narrator frequently interrupts himself, goes off on tangents, comments on the act of writing, addresses the reader directly, includes blank pages, marbled pages, and even a completely black page.

Because of its idiosyncratic style, it provoked both admiration and criticism. Samuel Johnson famously quipped, “Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.”

The novel’s influence extends to later modernist and postmodern writers who experiment with narrative form and authorial presence.

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

Toward the end of his life, Sterne published A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768).

This shorter work retains much of Sterne’s style: intimate address, digression, reflection, and sensitivity to emotional nuance.

Other Writings

In addition to his novels, Sterne published sermons under the persona “Mr. Yorick”—collections of spoken and written sermons that proved popular in his time. Letters from Yorick to Eliza and The Journal to Eliza, reflecting his emotional and romantic preoccupations.

Historical Context & Themes

Sterne worked in the mid-18th century, during the Enlightenment era. His work juxtaposes reason and sentiment, wit and emotion, because he lived at a time when literature was evolving from formal decorum to more personal, expressive modes.

He challenged the conventions of the novel as it existed, pushing toward reflexivity, intertextuality, and breaking the “fourth wall.” In that regard, he anticipated later developments in narrative theory and experimental literature.

Sterne also participated, at least peripherally, in debates of his day—on religion, moral sensibility, and the role of feeling in literary life. His work sometimes edged into subtle social critique, often wrapped in humor.

His travels to France and Italy corresponded to a broader trend in the 18th century: the Grand Tour, the mobility of intellectuals, and cross-cultural exchange. His health struggles mirror the importance (in that era) of climate, travel, and personal well-being for literary men.

Legacy and Influence

Laurence Sterne’s legacy is substantial, especially in how he opened possibilities for how novels can be written.

• Tristram Shandy is often cited as a precursor to the modern novel and an influence on writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and many postmodern authors.

• His playful, self-aware style laid groundwork for metafiction, unreliable narration, and narrative interruption.

• In Continental Europe, he was quickly translated and praised; his innovations were regarded as daring and original.

• In the 19th and 20th centuries, literary critics and theorists have revisited Sterne’s work in discussions of narrative, parody, digression, and the limits of representation.

• Places associated with Sterne (e.g. Shandy Hall in Coxwold) have become literary historic sites.

Though he died young, Sterne’s experiments in tone, structure, and reader interaction continue to inform writers and critics.

Personality, Traits & Challenges

Laurence Sterne was a personality full of paradoxes: a clergyman who delighted in bawdy humor, an experimental novelist who valued sentiment, a man whose private emotional life shaped his public voice.

• He had a flair for self-promotion and performance: he cultivated fame, corresponded widely, and mobilized his public persona.

• He was also emotionally sensitive, prone to affective expression (especially in letters, Journal to Eliza, etc.).

• Health troubled him throughout adult life. His chronic consumption (tuberculosis) influenced his later travels and writing.

• His marriage suffered, in part due to Elizabeth’s mental and physical health and his own infidelities and emotional distractions.

• He balanced clerical duties with aesthetic ambition, sometimes drawing censure for blending humor and irreverence with sacred office.

He was a man who wanted both to amuse and to move; who understood that laughter, sentiment, and reflection are all part of how we make sense of life.

Memorable Sayings & Quotes

Because Sterne’s style is quirky and embedded in longer prose, exact quotable lines are less often distilled than in poets—but a few passages remain memorable. Here are a selection:

• “I write as I find, not as I should like to find.”

• “The greatest inability is that of the mind to dismiss an old prejudice.”

• “We make acquaintances of those whom we know, and friends of those whom we trust.”

• “The life of my dreams in reality is only a pen’s stroke from the life I live.”

• “Humour is the foundation of all understanding.”

• From Tristram Shandy: “Nothing, Sir, is more provoking than the attempt to talk sense into a man who is out of his senses.”

These lines reflect Sterne’s playfulness, his attention to internal states, and his belief in humor as a mode of insight.

Lessons from Laurence Sterne

From the life and work of Laurence Sterne, we can extract several valuable lessons:

1. Embrace digression and interruption. Life and thought are rarely linear; narrative can reflect interiority.

2. Bring the reader into the process. Sterne’s use of direct address, self-commentary, and “meta” technique invites the reader into the act of making meaning.

3. Marry humor with sentiment. Sternian writing shows that wit and emotional depth need not be enemies.

4. Don’t be constrained by genre. Sterne moved between sermons, satire, fiction, letters—and in doing so, challenged what each form might do.

5. Work in spite of constraints. His health, clerical obligations, and financial limitations did not prevent him from creating daring work later in life.

6. The personal is literary. His emotional life, obsessions, and relationships (for example with Eliza Draper) infused his writing with vulnerability and longing.

Conclusion

Laurence Sterne remains a singular voice in literary history: irreverent, introspective, audacious, sentimental. His experiments in style, his delight in paradox and digression, and his willingness to expose the machinery of narrative make him a forerunner of many later literary innovations.

He teaches us that storytelling is not just a matter of plotting events, but of capturing the flow of consciousness, the interruptions, the jumps, the emotional residues. His legacy continues to inspire writers who refuse to settle for linearity, who believe that laughter, feeling, and self-reflection are central to the human story.