Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne – serie

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.