Product Description

'Who has not Tristram Shandy read? Is any mortal so ill bred?' So wrote the young James Boswell in the spring of 1760, when Sterne's comic novel was received with extravagant popular acclaim and some bewilderment. Indeed, how can one describe a novel whose hero-narrator fails in the first two volumes even to get himself born? A narrator who, in a series of digressions he calls the 'sunshine' of reading, interests us instead in such characters as his uncle Toby, a devotee of wargames in the garden, or Parson Yorick, a self-portrait of the author? The text of this Oxford World's Classics edition is based on the first editions of all nine volumes. No unnecessary modernization has obscured Sterne's idiosyncratic presentation of the novel.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230727 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 626 pages

Customer Reviews

Great value for its sheer scholarly copiousness!
What Laurence Sterne has given us in 'Tristram Shandy' is a landmark piece of prose writing, and what Penguin have done is to re-package that in an edition of equal status. The text follows the established 'Florida' edition of Sterne's work, and the editor Melvin New is right to acknowledge the scholarly importance of Christopher Ricks introduction to the previous Penguin edition, hence it is reprinted here along with New's up to date and equally copious editor's introduction. Thus we have two critical essays by major scholars covering much of what has been written and said about 'Tristram Shandy' for the last 50 years or so. Add to that a glossary and over a hundred pages of notes and annotations to clarify the text's obscurities and references and you've already got more than your money's worth before you've got to the text proper. And what a text too. It isn't by any means to everyone's taste, and some may think it a complete waste of six hundred-odd pages, but herein lies its charm. Yes, it doesn't really get anywhere, and yes it does do odd things like printing squiggly lines and black pages, but it is just this breaking of convention and questioning of novel writing that gives it its power - and humour. It has long been established that what Postmodern authors have been praised for in the last 30 years or so Sterne was doing in the 1760s. And here it is displayed with such exuberance and wit. This is a very funny book, even now, over 300 years later, and it is easy to see how it caused such a stir in a society which was rapidly becoming affected and prudish, with its sexual innuendo. A must for scholars and lovers of Eighteenth Century writing, humour and curiosities. Incredible value and not to be missed.

Excellent edition
The vast number of the allusions in 'Tristram Shandy' to all sorts of subjects make it very difficult for a reader to appreciate the novel on its own. Subsequently this edition is invaluable to students &c who want some idea of what Sterne is actually talking about half the time - the notes are excellent and so is Ricks' introduction.

The funniest book ever written
The augustan enlightenment period of English literature is one of my least favourite; I do not enjoy Dr Johnson, Thomas Gray, and Defoe isn't a great novelist. Which is why I was so surprised by this 'novel', bursting at the seams with a restless comic energy - and it was written by a clergyman! This is the bawdiest of the bawdy, but not low brow in any way. Sterne reinvents the novel as a sea of possibilities, exploiting even the forms limitations. He is a master of illusion, and constantly mocks the reader in good spirit, playing with time scales and propriety. Anybody who likes Swift will be knocked out by this; Sterne outdoes the master of satire at every turn.
The central irony of the novel is that the narrator is meant to tell us his life story, but does not even get born until the fourth volume, as he digresses further and further from the starting point of his conception. This novel embodies the creative process, and is most probably the most creatively 'free' work ever written. Sterne destroys all preconceptions, and sets limits only where he can go no further.