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.

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne 'the most liberated spirit of all time'.

La escritura de Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), nacido en lrlanda, brota de la corriente que abrieron Rabelais y Cervantes, y que habria de llegar hasta Joyce. Tristram Shandy es una pieza clave en la formacion de la novela moderna, en la que el lector descubre con asombro como la veta subversiva que alienta la narracion desborda los limites de la peripecia para contaminar las mismas convenciones del genero. La autorreferencia, la paradoja y el subjetivismo se alian con la explotacion de los recursos tipograficos para crear, ademas, una de las novelas mas divertidas de la literatura inglesa.

In annotated texts based on those of the acclaimed Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne , this edition features the two works Sterne produced in the final year of his illness-plagued life: the witty, bawdy, pathetic, and thoughtful A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy ; and Continuation of the Bramine's Journal , Sterne's correspondence to a twenty-two-year-old married Englishwoman living in India ("a Diary," as he put it, "of the miserable feelings of a person separated from a Lady for whose Society he languish'd"). Together, these mutually illuminating works offer rich insight into their author's hopes, fears, loves, longings, and philosophy as he prepared to face death and judgment. Excerpts from related texts provide context for understanding the title works in relation to the earlier writings and life of this exuberant yet subtle genius of eighteenth-century English literature.

This Norton Critical Edition includes: * The first London edition (1759) of Sterne's revolutionary and influential novel. * Textual notes, explanatory footnotes, and a preface by Judith Hawley. * Three illustrations. * The Author on the Novel, fourteen judiciously chosen letters from the latest scholarly edition. * A wide range of early responses that demonstrate Tristram Shandy's changing reception from its publication through the nineteenth century. * Eleven major critical interpretations, ten of them new to this edition. * A Chronology of Laurence Sterne's life and work and a Selected Bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format-annotated text, contexts, and criticism-helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

Sterne's Sentimental Journey is a novel without a plot and a journey without a destination. Here, Sterne records the adventures of the amiable Parson Yorick, as sets off on his travels through France and Italy, relishing his encounters with all manner of men and women, particularly the pretty ones. The tale rapidly moves away from the narrative of travel to become a series of pathetic and ironic incidents, dramatic sketches, philosophical musings, and anecdotes. Here, sharp wit is mixed with gaiety, irony with tender feeling forging a truly original style and establishing Sterne as the first of the stream-of-consciousness writers.

‘L—d! said my mother, what is all this story about? –
A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick – and one of the best of its kind I ever heard’

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 text and notes of this volume are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, with a critical introduction by Melvyn New and Christopher Ricks’s introductory essay from the first Penguin Classics edition of the novel.

THE FLORIDA EDITION