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  • Published: 19 June 2003
  • ISBN: 9780141439778
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 784
  • RRP: $22.99

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman




Penguin Classics relaunch.

Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters.

  • Published: 19 June 2003
  • ISBN: 9780141439778
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 784
  • RRP: $22.99

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Laurence Sterne

Date: 2013-08-06
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.

Irish-born Laurence Sterne graduated from Cambridge in 1737 and took holy orders, becoming a prebend in York Cathedral. His masterpiece, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy made him a celebrity but ill-health necessitated recuperative travel and A Sentimental Journey grew out of seven-month trip through France and Italy. He died the year it was published, 1768.

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