Talk:Laurence Sterne

Spelling

The Wikipedia article "Lawrence Sterne" must be removed or redirected (linked) to the "Laurence Sterne" article. I don't know how to remove pages completely or make aliases. Whoever knows how to do it, please do it. The spelling of the author's first name as "Lawrence" is wrong or at least not commonly accepted.

Is he spelled "Laurence" or "Lawrence"? Stern 23:59, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

According to the Times Literary Supplement for July 7th 2006 (review of Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Nations) "The entry for Laurence Sterne ... contains passages lifted without acknowledgement from the 1828 periodical The Mirror for Nature and from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, not because either passage is insightful (neither is), but presumably because both texts are online. The use of the Brtitannica leads this up-to-the-minute internet encyclopedia to list only one book published after 1912 among the dozen books suggested for further reading on Sterne." I note that one reference has been added since this article was published. But does it make sense to retain antique references to books that are probably no longer available? --RichardVeryard 08:29, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Anglo-Irish?

Sterne was not Anglo-Irish, he was just born in Ireland, where his father was stationed. Anglo-Irish implies something quite different. Sterne was, so far as one can tell from this article, an Englishman. john k 16:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, he was far less Irish than Swift was. Laurence never wished to be identified as Irish, but there is a small connection, if only to list him as one of many English writers who visited Ireland/experienced Ireland and were bitter from it (Trollope seems to be the exception, except that Thackery makes some nice comments in regard to Ireland). Ottava Rima (talk) 05:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

It is misleading to say that Sterne merely visited or experienced Ireland: He spent most of his first eleven years living in the place, full-time; in other words, almost his entire childhood. He was finally moved to England by his father to begin his secondary education. In modern times, one such as Sterne would be defined as having both Irish and British citizenship. --O'Dea (talk) 04:01, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Sterne was both Irish and English

Sterne's literature is taught in Irish universities as both Irish and English writing, and he is registered as an Irish writer (but not exclusively so) at the Princess Grace Irish Library (PGIL), an extensive and reputable scholarly database of Irish writers.

Remarks about Sterne at the latter facility record that he is included in Richard Ryan's Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.576-78; also in Charles A. Read's The Cabinet of Irish Literature (London, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast & Edinburgh: Blackie & Son (1876-78); and in Justin McCarthy's Irish Literature (Washington: University of America) (1904).

According to the PGIL writers database entry for Sterne, with the notable exception of A. N. Jeffares Anglo-Irish Literature (Macmillan 1982), Irish literary histories generally do not mention Sterne (viz., Deane, A Short History of Irish Literature, 1986), though dictionaries of biography do (viz., Harry Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, 1988.)

So much for Sterne's Irish credentials. It would be incomplete to fix Sterne as only Irish or only English, because he was both, with most of his childhood lived in Ireland, and the remainder of his life in England, with the exception of some late travelling on the Continent. --O'Dea (talk) 05:10, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Mention in the media

There's a good article in First Monday, which mentions this page and some issues with it. It would probably be worth taking a look. Cheers. Cormaggio ^{is learning} 11:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Mistreated His Wife?

That hardly seems to fully be the case after reading numerous printed biographical records. At the most ungenerous, it seems the two simply had a "tumultuous" marriage. In any case, those lines absolutely do not belong under the subject heading "Works;" they belong under "Biography," and they are completely a propos of nothing before or after excepting the lame joke. I have removed them for the time ("Citation Needed" or no, it is neither the appropriate place in the article nor the type of thing that should be said without citation); please discuss. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.57.129.139 (talk) 06:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Image donations from the Laurence Sterne Trust

As a result of the Yorkshire Network GLAMwiki Project there are now the first (of hopefully many) donated images from the Laurence Sterne Trust available on Commons: Category:Images from the Laurence Sterne Trust. I hope that they will be useful for illustrating articles related to Sterne and his works. If there are particular topics that you would like to see more of you may want to search the trust's online collections and contact me with requests. You may also find useful resources on the trust's Sterneana pages. Thanks! PatHadley (talk) 14:31, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Laurence Sterne was not a Freemason

Changed the line "A year later some fellow Freemasons erected a memorial stone with a rhyming epitaph near to his original burial place." to "A year later a group Freemasons erected a memorial stone with a rhyming epitaph near to his original burial place." to avoid confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oneksons (talk • contribs) 04:08, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Beware of Wikipedia mirror page

If you run Earwig's Copyvio Detector on this page, it will appear that this page is full of copyright violations from Jane Austen Centre website; however, this web article was posted on December 15, 2015 and if you look at Laurence Sterne's article history, you will see that it contained the same information pre-dating December 15, 2015. From this, I feel confident in stating that the Jane Austen webpage copied information from Wikipedia and that this page does not contain copyright violations. Since this is not an obvious Wikipedia mirror, I just wanted to clarify this for concerned readers and editors. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 20:21, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Sterne's origin

Hello. I've noticed that Laurence Sterne's nationality (or ethnicity) has been changed once again to Irish. This is a contentious subject. I have studied a small amount of literature from Ireland and I must say that although I once categorized Sterne as an Irish writer, the more I learned about his life led me to have doubts about classifying him this way. Much has been cited about Sterne's upbringing in Ireland, his mother being a part of the Anglo-Irish class, and the various references in his work to the land he was born in. This information is good to know, and is no doubt essential to understanding an aspect of this unusual man. But from what I've read about him, his youth is remarkably akin to what we now call a military brat. Sterne spent the vast majority of his life in Yorkshire, and didn't start writing anything until his mid-40's. If I remember correctly, he was advised to tone down the Yorkshire elements in Tristram Shandy very early on in the writing process. I do not mean to suggest that we should dismiss his upbringing. Rather, his ethnic identity is very dubious.

In the past, I have noted that his identity has been made Anglo-Irish. I'm not necessarily convinced that label fits him either. He does not really fall into the class that Swift, Berkeley, Goldsmith etc. fall into. By comparison, Congreve spent more of his upbringing in Ireland than Sterne did, but I don't believe anybody sees Congreve as possessing that identity anymore. Perhaps other's could share their thoughts on this matter WoodRose79 (talk) 23:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Laurence Sterne/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: LEvalyn (talk · contribs) 05:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 08:13, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Comments

• I've done some very small copy-editing.

• enlisted in the army at the age of 25; he enlisted uncommissioned - would be nice to avoid the repetition.

• Early life account should start with "Laurence Sterne" and then stick with the surname except where ambiguous with other family members, in which case "Laurence" should be used (on its own).

• During this period, the Sternes moved to Dublin three different times, at other times living in Plymouth, the Isle of Wight, Wicklow, Annamoe, and Carrickfergus.[11] They lived in a townhouse during a particularly prosperous stint in Dublin from 1717 to 1719,[12] but at other times lived in the army barracks. - this uncomfortably separates the fact that the many moves were nearly always from Barracks A to Barracks B ... and implies but does not state that they were dragged backwards and forwards across the Irish Sea. It also implies but does not state that there were at least 8 placements in 8 years. I think we could say more simply that "The Sternes moved repeatedly (about once a year) between poor family lodgings in army barracks in Britain and Ireland, and once were prosperous enough to stay in a Dublin townhouse." or words to that effect.

• attended boarding school at Hipperholme Grammar School. - best say this is in Yorkshire.

• sizarship - I know it's wikilinked but the term is so rare that a brief gloss (a bursary) would help readers.

• Please move link of Cleveland to first instance.

• Please link York Minster.

• • Thank you for your edits, and I've made all the above changes. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Since William Topham is redlinked, please give him a brief gloss to assist readers who've not heard of him. The intro to A Political Romance] says he's an ecclesiastical lawyer at York [Minster].

• • Hm, maybe Topham himself is getting too in the weeds -- I mostly want to convey that this was an interpersonal conflict related to church politics and that's why the pamphlets were burned, rather than the more natural assumption that they were risque or heretical. I've gone the other route of taking details out, but hopefully this still achieves the aim of clarity. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• kept up an intimacy - an antique phrase. Friendship, maybe?

• • Done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• humour writing - the term clanks uncomfortably over the tongue; "humorous writing" seems to be more common, too.

• • To my tongue, "humour writing" is a genre, like an "adventure novel", whereas "humorous writing" is an aesthetic judgment, like an "adventurous novel". I could go to "comic" writing? ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  If you feel it's the term of art then it must stay. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• tend to be markedly polarised - this leads this reader to expect 2 polar-opposite viewpoints to be explicated in the following sentences, but only one viewpoint follows. What was it polarised against? Or perhaps neither of the 2 are given, and Jefferson is not writing about its significance at all, but about its tradition? Something is missing here.

• • Hmmm, I think the two views were meant to be, the preceding established one that the novel is very good and important and new, and the new opinion that maybe it's just fine and not that groundbreaking. I made some edits to clarify. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• He visited France until 1764, - an odd phrase. His first visit was from 1762-1764; we could say he travelled in France for this period, or stayed for that long, or better give brief details of where he went, who he stayed with, and what he did.

• A Sentimental Journey is here dismissed as just a part of the Tristram Shandy project, but in its own article is shown to be rather more than that, "more emotionally moving and less bawdy". Something along those lines does need to be given here, however briefly.
  • Addressed both of the above. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Or at least-- I addressed the clunkiness of "visited" re: his travel. In terms of getting brief details of where he went and how, it would take a bit of doing as all the article-length sources gloss right over his travels. If I was looking at FA level I'd dig in to Ross's book, which likely goes month-by-month, and distill something from that, but for GA I'd like to leave it where it is. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:42, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• What I don't see here is any sort of (reliably cited) commentary on the fact that Sterne was a) a clergyman, b) writing bawdy humour, and c) evidently much interested in Eliza, who wasn't his wife. Readers may not know how libertarian the 18th century was; or rather, even if they do, morals shifted significantly between decades of that century, and it was certainly unusual even then for a priest to be openly Rabelaisian. I think we need some sort of discussion of his position and attitudes to him in his lifetime, and perhaps also the posthumous reaction.
  • This is a fair point, but one I'll need a little more time to address. Honestly, it's worth pointing out that although he doesn't seem to have slept with Eliza, he was unfaithful to his wife almost constantly, which also contributed to a somewhat scandalous reputation, in his lifetime and with the Victorians. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  OK; really, almost any sort of cited comment about the unfaithfulness and reputation would fit the bill here for me, though an actual discussion of the a, b, c would be best, given his profession. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:45, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Images

• All the images are on Commons and appear to be correctly licensed.

• As a curiosity, why are the first editions in File:Tristram Shandy First edition spines.jpg numbered 1..9? Numbering usually denotes volumes of a set.
  • The novel is nine volumes long! I didn't write the caption but it likely says "first editions" because the book was published in installments, so it takes some doing to get a first edition of the 1759 vols and a first edition of the 1761 vols, etc etc. (Many people even in the 18thC would end up with a "mixed" copy.) The caption's phrasing made immediate sense to me but is clearly misleading to a broader audience so I've changed it to say just "first edition" singular. I thought that was better than a wordy gloss like "First editions of the nine volumes of Tristram Shandy", but let me know if you think I should change to the longer & more precise version. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  I remember it as a one-volume paperback ... seriously, the caption is much improved by the small copy-edit. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:49, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Ah, thanks for your edit to the caption-- that's less awkward than my version and helpful to readers. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:07, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Sources

• All the sources are reliable and appropriate to the subject.

• There are many short-form refs to books such as Ross 2001. Some of these are to very small page ranges, and some actually overlap, e.g. pp. 25-29 / pp. 27-29 / p. 29. Others are small and adjacent, e.g. 20-21/22-23 or p. 192/p. 193. Several of these could be combined.
  • I worry that combining these would add friction for verification. At least for the ones I added, I've indicated the exact pages which it would be sufficient for someone to read to verify the cited info, and no more. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Havard 2014, King 1995, Pfister 2001, Venn 1927 are all unused and so do not belong in 'Sources'. If they are actually useful they can go in 'Further reading' and their harv links disarmed with |ref=none, but I always wonder what unused sources may actually be useful for.
  • Great catch. I removed the two journal articles on Tristram Shandy and the 1927 Cambridge alumni catalogue. Pfister 2001 looks like it could plausibly be useful, as a book-length biography of Sterne from a reputable publisher, so I moved it to 'Further reading'. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• There is no need to provide retrieval dates for books (or for research papers).
  • Done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Spot-checks [11], [48], [66] ok.

• [81] is on the topic of TS vs SJ as stated, but it actually challenges the critics' view that the two are similar, instead examining their differences. Some copy-editing of the claim seems to be necessary here.
  • Hm, I'd say this citation is mostly being used for this thesis's literature review, ie, this author's assertion that several critics have referred to the two texts as quite similar, even to the extent that the first could be seen as a draft and the latter an elaboration of the first. I've hedged the article to Today, A Sentimental Journey is often interpreted by critics as part of the same artistic project to which Tristram Shandy belongs. but now that it's in context with a bit more detail on A Sentimental Journey I can also see the case for just cutting this sentence. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Summary

• This is an interesting and informative biography which makes "the main points". I have no doubt that more could be said, but it'll do as it is, with the small issues mentioned above sorted out.