STERNE, LAURENCE (1713-68). An English author. He was horn at Clomnel, in Ireland. Carried about in the regiment in which his father was an officer, he saw many phases of life in Irelaml and England. From ten to eighteen he was at school at Halifax, in Yorkshire. Later he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1736. Be was ordained two years later, probably with a view to taking the family living of Sutton, near York, which was immediately given him, to be followed in 1741 by the prebend in York Minster. In 1743 the living of Stillington, which carried with it another pre bendal stall in the cathedral, was given to him. He pasFed twenty years in his Yorkshire home, preaching curious sermons, associating with boisterous squires and reading Cervantes, Rabe lais, and the old romances. He found himself suddenly famous when the first two volumes of his Tristram Shandy speared at York at the end of 1759. He went up to London, be came the lion of the moment, and pub lished a collection of sermons. In 1760 he was presented to the living of Cox wold. There he went on with Tristram, publish ing the ninth and last volume in 1767. During these years he spent much time in London and traveled on the Continent. The outcome of his tour in the autumn of 1765 was A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768). Less than a month after its publieation Sterne died in a London lodging. In 1775 appeared Letters to His Intimate Friends, with the fragment of an autobiography, edited by his daughter, and Letters from Yorick to Eliza (i.e. Mrs. Elizabeth
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Sterne's work reached a wide popularity at once. and had a following in England, France, and Germany for years. His sentimentality, the deliberate self-conscious indulgence in feelings of pathos, became the fashion of the day. His work is curiously subjective, dependent upon the moods and whims of the moment; and its form less, easy-going style, such a contrast to the ordered regularity which had marked English prose from Dryden to Addison, thus admirably represents his thought. His characters are re markable for their genuine human quality, re mote as they live from The interests of the ordi nary people of the time, and belong to the small class of positive creations in literature. Consult the biographies by Fitzgerald (London, 1864; 2d ed. 1890) and Traill (ib., 1882) ; Stapfer, Lau rence Sterne, so personae et ses outrages (Paris, 1870) ; Texte, Rousseau et le cosmopolitisme an SII1lcmue siècle (ib., 1895) ; Thack eray, English Ilumuurists (London, 1353). His works, collected in 1780, were reprinted with newly discovered letters under the editorship of J. P. Browne (London, 1873). A convenient but less complete edition was edited by G. Saints bury (London, 1894).