Laurence Sterne
Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric (1713–1768)
Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric. He is best known for his comic novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767) and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768).
Sterne grew up in a military family, travelling mainly in Ireland but briefly in England. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge, on a sizarship, gaining bachelor's and master's degrees, and was ordained as a priest in 1738. While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741. He briefly wrote political propaganda for the Whigs, but abandoned politics in 1742. In 1759, he wrote an ecclesiastical satire A Political Romance, which embarrassed the church and was burned. Having discovered his talent for comedy, at age 46 he dedicated himself to humour writing as a vocation. Also in 1759, he published the first volume of Tristram Shandy, which was an enormous success and continued for a total of nine volumes. He was a literary celebrity for the rest of his life.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q218960. VIAF identifies the subject as 61552699. The Library of Congress control number is n79073616. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1713, 1768, 1759 and 1767.
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This entry incorporates text from “Laurence Sterne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.