Al-Warraq Library does not host book files; it takes you to the copy at the original source. Public-domain status differs from country to country, so check the law where you live before downloading or republishing the book. Do you hold rights in this work? Request its removal
Tristram Shandy sets out to tell his life and opinions, but he is so distracted by digressions that he takes an extraordinarily long time even to get himself…
Catalogue details
Author
Laurence Sterne
Category
Novels & Stories
Language
English
Source
Project Gutenberg
About this book
Tristram Shandy sets out to tell his life and opinions, but he is so distracted by digressions that he takes an extraordinarily long time even to get himself born. Instead we meet his father Walter, full of strange theories about names and noses; his gentle uncle Toby, wounded at the siege of Namur, who spends his days rebuilding battlefields on the bowling green with his servant Corporal Trim; and the melancholy parson Yorick. The book includes a black page, a marbled page, a blank page for the reader's own drawing and chapters out of order.
Context and significance
Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), a Yorkshire clergyman, published it in nine volumes between 1759 and 1767 and became famous overnight. Two centuries before modernism, it played games with time, memory and the very form of the novel, and writers from James Joyce to Salman Rushdie have learned from it. Compare a more conventional novel of its age, Tom Jones.