Laurence Sterne : A Life

Laurence Sterne was in his mid-40s when the publication of "Tristram Shandy" catapulted him from obscurity into unprecedented literary fame.

The story of how a provincial clergyman became the most fashionable writer of his day is extraordinary, and all the more remarkable for having been engineered by its subject. "I wrote not to be fed, but to be famous", Laurence Sterne declared of his comic masterpiece, and in order to achieve his ambition he became an assiduous networker, as astute a self-publicist as any modern author could hope to be.Shocked critics of "Tristram Shandy" denounced his bawdy novel as a scandal to the cloth but Sterne revelled in the celebrity his age's obsession with novelty and fashion allowed him.

He at last found compensation for a life characterized by alternating moods of gaiety and gloom.

Unhappily married to a woman who suffered a nervous breakdown and at one time believed herself to be the Queen of Bohemia, Sterne became notorious for his sexual and sentimental liaisons with other women.

His second book, "A Sentimental Journey", transmuted his experiences into literary expressions of moral feeling.