Laurence Sterne – författare

En kulturell praktprestation … Måste man verkligen läsa en bok från 1700-talet? Svaret är ett rungande JA! Det räcker inte med att ha läst ett utdrag ur Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy. Nyhetsläget kräver tung motmedicin. Fokus

Östergren har gjort en häpnadsväckande bra översättning av en roman som för mig verkat nästintill omöjlig att översätta. Göteborgs-Posten

Känns fortfarande relevant och modernt … Förhoppningsvis ger Östergrens rappa översättning boken en skjuts in i vår tid – och mot nya svenska läsare. Upsala Nya Tidning

Översättningen är styvt utförd. Expressen

Klas Östergren har gjort ett enormt arbete med översättningen för att göra boken tillgänglig. Den känns modern i språket. Den känns som om den kunde varit skriven idag. Johannes Anyuru 

Jag skrattade högt. Den är som livet – man försöker tänka: vad är det som är viktigt här i livet?, men det låter sig inte fångas. Den här boken gav mig ett slags känsla för hur det är att leva. Nina Hemmingsson

Språkligt, typografiskt, kronologiskt och allmänt stökig. Femina

Ingen bok i världen liknar Tristram Shandy, utgiven 1759–1767. Dess lekar med den då nya romankonstens gränser har knappast överträffats och känns lika fräscha än i dag. Lika många har älskat som avskytt boken.  

Den stackars Tristram Shandy försöker skildra sitt liv och sina meningar, men ständiga utvikningar och infall gör att han knappt hinner mer än födas under bokens gång. Och inte handlar den om hans liv, utan snarare hans oförarglige farbrors, ej heller om hans meningar så mycket som hans filosofiske faders. 

Utmana ditt tålamod (och din prydhet) med en humorklassiker där allt är ställt på ända – förordet placerat mitt i, dedikationen utbjuden till högsta budgivare, borttappade sidor, en omöjlig kronologi och ständiga typografiska hyss – i en enda hyllning av vad fiktion kan och inte kan göra. 

I översättning av Klas Östergren och med en inledning av professor Håkan Möller. 

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'.

Sterne's utterly original novel - the meandering, maddening 'autobiography' of one of literature's oldest comic characters.Doomed to become the ‘sport of fortune’ by an interruption at the crucial moment of conception, Tristram Shandy’s life lurches from one mishap to another: his nose crushed by the doctor’s forceps during birth, christened with the wrong name, an unfortunate incident involving a slamming sash window… Discover the anti-autobiography of the hilarious Tristram Shandy.WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TOM MCCARTHY‘Tristram Shandy is one of the funniest novels in the English language. It's also one of the first great experimental literary works’ Independent

A furiously witty response to Tobias Smollett's curmudgeonly 'Travels through France and Italy', Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy became a hugely influential work of travel writing in its own right. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction and notes by Paul Goring.When Yorick, the roving narrator of Sterne's innovative final novel, sets off for France on a whim, he produces no ordinary travelogue. Jolting along in his coach from Calais, through Paris, and on towards the Italian border, the amiable parson is blithely unconcerned by famous views or monuments, but he engages us with tales of his encounters with all manner of people, from counts and noblewomen to beggars and chambermaids. And as drama piles upon drama, anecdote, flirtation and digression, Yorick's destination takes second place to an exhilarating voyage of emotional and erotic exploration. Interweaving sharp wit with warm humour and irony with genuine feeling, A Sentimental Journey paints a captivating picture of an Englishman's adventures abroad.In his introduction, Paul Goring discusses Sterne's literary career and his semi-autobiographical depiction of Yorick, and sets the novel within the context of eighteenth-century travel writing and the vogue of sentimental fiction. This edition also includes a chronology, updated further reading and notes.Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) graduated from Cambridge in 1737 and took holy orders, becoming a prebend in York Cathedral. His masterpiece, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman made him a celebrity but ill-health necessitated recuperative travel and A Sentimental Journey grew out of a seven-month trip through France and Italy. He died the year it was published, 1768.If you enjoyed A Sentimental Journey, you might like Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also available in Penguin Classics.

The Penguin English Library Edition of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne'I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done ...'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 Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

'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, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. 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.'The book that I would never tire of ... Sterne was about 250 years ahead of his time'Roy Porter, author of Enlightenment: Britain And The Creation Of The Modern World

'Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read...'Sterne's great comic novel is the fictional autobiography of Tristram Shandy, a hero who fails even to get born in the first two volumes. It contains some of the best-known and best-loved characters in English literature, including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, Dr Slop and the Widow Wadman. Beginning with Tristram's conception, the novel recounts his progress in 'this scurvy and disasterous world of ours', including his misnaming during baptism and his accidental circumcision by a falling sash-window at the age of five; unsurprisingly, Tristram declares that he has been 'the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune'. Tristram Shandy also offers the narrator's 'opinions', at once facetious and highly serious, on books and learning in an age of rapidly expanding print culture, and on the changing understanding of the roles of writers and readers alike.This revised edition retains the first edition text incorporating Sterne's later changes, and adds two original Hogarth illustrations and a wealth of contextualizing information. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Love is nothing without feeling. And feeling is still less without love.'Celebrated in its own day as the progenitor of 'a school of sentimental writers', A Sentimental Journey (1768) has outlasted its many imitators because of the humour and mischievous eroticism that inform Mr Yorick's travels. Setting out to journey to France and Italy he gets little further than Lyons but finds much to appreciate, in contrast to contemporary travel writers whom Sterne satirizes in the figures of Smelfungus and Mundungus. A master of ambiguity and double entendre, Sterne is nevertheless as concerned as his peers with exploring the nature of virtue; unlike other writers of sentimental fiction Sterne insists on the inseparability of desire and feeling.This new edition includes a selection from The Sermons of Mr Yorick, which shed light on the concerns of the Journey, The Journal to Eliza, which records Sterne's feelings as he languishes for the company of Eliza Draper, and A Political Romance, the satire on a local ecclesiastical squabble that was the catalyst for Sterne's literary career. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'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'One of the greatest novels ever written, now in a wonderful new clothbound edition Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. 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.'The book that I would never tire of ... Sterne was about 250 years ahead of his time'Roy Porter, author of Enlightenment: Britain And The Creation Of The Modern World

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 SeriesRead 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.

A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne is one of the most innovative and influential works of eighteenth-century travel literature, blending the conventions of the Grand Tour with Sterne’s distinctive wit, pathos, and satiric irony. Published in 1768 under the persona “Mr. Yorick,” the book represents Sterne’s late-career turn from the sprawling digressions of *Tristram Shandy* to a more compact form, yet it continues his experiments in voice, narrative form, and the fusion of humor with moral sentiment. The “sentimental journey” does not dwell on monuments, landscapes, or political observations, but rather on fleeting encounters, everyday details, and emotional impressions—whether Yorick giving alms to beggars, exchanging snuffboxes, conversing with peasants, or reflecting on the kindness and follies of strangers. Sterne reimagines travel as an inward and affective experience, where benevolence, sensibility, and self-knowledge emerge through the play of chance meetings, minor inconveniences, and comic misunderstandings.At once parody and performance, the *Journey* is both a response to and a satire of other contemporary travel narratives, particularly Tobias Smollett’s *Travels through France and Italy* with its spleen and irritability. Sterne’s Yorick moves in the opposite spirit—seeking moments of sympathy, intimacy, and joy, while also exposing the equivocations of desire, vanity, and concupiscence. The result is a work that oscillates between tenderness and comic irony, dramatizing the paradoxes of eighteenth-century “sensibility.” Sterne’s contemporaries hailed the book for its refinement of feeling, its pathos, and its moral undertones, and it quickly became a model for the “sentimental” mode in literature and culture. At the same time, modern critics emphasize its doubleness: a text that teaches readers to value benevolence and civility, while also inviting them to laugh at Yorick’s foibles and recognize the comic muddle of human motives. A Sentimental Journey remains a touchstone for understanding both the culture of sensibility and Sterne’s enduring comic vision.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne is one of the most innovative and influential works of eighteenth-century travel literature, blending the conventions of the Grand Tour with Sterne’s distinctive wit, pathos, and satiric irony. Published in 1768 under the persona “Mr. Yorick,” the book represents Sterne’s late-career turn from the sprawling digressions of *Tristram Shandy* to a more compact form, yet it continues his experiments in voice, narrative form, and the fusion of humor with moral sentiment. The “sentimental journey” does not dwell on monuments, landscapes, or political observations, but rather on fleeting encounters, everyday details, and emotional impressions—whether Yorick giving alms to beggars, exchanging snuffboxes, conversing with peasants, or reflecting on the kindness and follies of strangers. Sterne reimagines travel as an inward and affective experience, where benevolence, sensibility, and self-knowledge emerge through the play of chance meetings, minor inconveniences, and comic misunderstandings.At once parody and performance, the *Journey* is both a response to and a satire of other contemporary travel narratives, particularly Tobias Smollett’s *Travels through France and Italy* with its spleen and irritability. Sterne’s Yorick moves in the opposite spirit—seeking moments of sympathy, intimacy, and joy, while also exposing the equivocations of desire, vanity, and concupiscence. The result is a work that oscillates between tenderness and comic irony, dramatizing the paradoxes of eighteenth-century “sensibility.” Sterne’s contemporaries hailed the book for its refinement of feeling, its pathos, and its moral undertones, and it quickly became a model for the “sentimental” mode in literature and culture. At the same time, modern critics emphasize its doubleness: a text that teaches readers to value benevolence and civility, while also inviting them to laugh at Yorick’s foibles and recognize the comic muddle of human motives. A Sentimental Journey remains a touchstone for understanding both the culture of sensibility and Sterne’s enduring comic vision.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is narrated by the title character in a series of digressions and interruptions that purportedly show the "life and opinions" — part of the novel's full title — of Tristram. Composed of nine "Books" originally published between 1759-1767, the novel has more to do with Shandy family members and their foibles and history than it seemingly does with Tristram himself. However, it is through Tristram's relating the actions, beliefs, and opinions of his family members — primarily his father, Walter Shandy, and his paternal Uncle Toby — that the reader gets a clearer picture of Tristram's character.

Samuel Johnson and Samuel Richardson condemned it. James Boswell and Goethe proclaimed it a masterpiece. And from the beginning Sterne realized he had written a book that would not suit everyone's taste. For more than two centuries. Tristram Shandy (1759-67) has astounded - and by turns confounded, captivated, angered, and amused but ever entertained - readers worldwide. While on the surface a comic, disjointed account of the title character's life and times, the work is in fact a brilliant commentary on life's inherent chaos, the pointed challenge of British clergy-man-turned-author Laurence Sterne to the twin concepts of rationalism and sentimentalism. Delineating his views through skillfully drawn representations - among them Tristram, Yorick, and Uncle Toby - Sterne pinpointed issues central to not only his era but our own. Filled with thought-provoking ideas and marked by an open, conversational writing style, Tristram Shandy: A Book for Free Spirits is an adroit guide to understanding the aims and achievements of Sterne's masterpiece and to fully appreciating its lessons for contemporary times.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years (vols. 3 and 4, 1761; vols. 5 and 6, 1762; vols. 7 and 8, 1765; vol. 9, 1767). It purports to be a biography of the eponymous character. Its style is marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices. As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to the extent that Tristram's own birth is not even reached until Volume III.

This is a scholarly edition of Laurence Sterne's sermons, and this volume also contains the notes to his 45 sermons. The introduction and notes explore early 18th-century Anglicanism; demonstrates Sterne's method of composing sermons; and indicates the relationship with his other writings.

This book is the culmination of more than forty years of research. These two volumes, the seventh and eighth in the heralded ""Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne"", offer the first collection of Sterne's letters in seventy-five years. Thirty new letters have been added, and all have been carefully and precisely reedited, making this the most accurate edition of his letters ever produced. The correspondence is thoroughly keyed to Sterne's published output, much of which has previously been edited by Melvyn New. New and coeditor Peter de Voogd also make major use of Arthur Cash's landmark biography of Sterne. The result is a work that securely establishes the literary as well as biographical significance of Sterne's letters. Sterne remains one of the towering figures of eighteenth-century life and literature, and a continuing influential presence in the canon of modern western fiction. Among those who have praised his writings are Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Gabrial Garcia-Marquez, Vladimir Nabokov, Milan Kundera, and most recently, the Turkish Nobel Prize recipient Orhan Pamuk.

This book is the culmination of more than forty years of research. These two volumes, the seventh and eighth in the heralded ""Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne"", offer the first collection of Sterne's letters in seventy-five years. Thirty new letters have been added, and all have been carefully and precisely reedited, making this the most accurate edition of his letters ever produced. The correspondence is thoroughly keyed to Sterne's published output, much of which has previously been edited by Melvyn New. New and coeditor Peter de Voogd also make major use of Arthur Cash's landmark biography of Sterne. The result is a work that securely establishes the literary as well as biographical significance of Sterne's letters. Sterne remains one of the towering figures of eighteenth-century life and literature, and a continuing influential presence in the canon of modern western fiction. Among those who have praised his writings are Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Gabrial Garcia-Marquez, Vladimir Nabokov, Milan Kundera, and most recently, the Turkish Nobel Prize recipient Orhan Pamuk