![]() The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy were rejected by the London publisher, Robert Dodsley, but, when privately printed, quickly sold out. ![]() (In the novel, Parson Yorick is an ironical self-portrait.) His work had the difficulties often associated with original work. Born in Ireland in 1713, Sterne spent much of his life as a country vicar near York. "I wrote, not to be fed but to be famous," he once said. Sterne became a celebrity, and made a fortune, fulfilling a deep ambition. As such, it became a huge bestseller in the 1760s. Tristram himself says he is writing a "civil, nonsensical, good-humoured Shandean book". "Shandy" is a word of obscure origin meaning "crack-brained, half-crazy". Some of the raw ebullience of the national mood is mirrored in the slightly mad pages of this uniquely entertaining novel. In other words, it appeared during the annus mirabilis of that prototype of international warfare that saw stunning British military victories in India, Canada and the Caribbean, and established the first British empire that would send the English language around the world. Tristram Shandy and its author, Laurence Sterne, are so intensely modern in mood and attitude, so profanely alert to the nuances of the human comedy, and so engaged with the narrative potentiality of the genre that it comes as something of a shock to discover that the novel was published during the seven years war. ![]()
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