Tristram Shandy (The Penguin English Library) - Softcover

Sterne, Laurence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141199997 ISBN 13: 9780141199993

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2012

Synopsis

The Penguin English Library Edition of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

'I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done ...'

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, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

About this title

About the Author

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.

From the Back Cover

Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne’s novel is a comic masterpiece of digression, egoism and sensationalism, as its hilarious asides, explanations and host of memorable secondary characters – such as Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Parson Yorick and Widow Wadman – take centre stage, at the expense of the actual life events the book sets out to depict.

A humorous compendium of European thought and literature – pastiching the likes of Locke and Bacon and referencing Pope, Swift, Cervantes and Rabelais – emerges amid the convoluted accounts of Tristram’s conception, misnaming and accidental circumcision by a sash window, in a shrewd narrative that examines the role and nature of language itself.

From the Inside Flap

'I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done ...'

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, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141199997
• ISBN 13: 9780141199993
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 640