Sterne continued to struggle with his illness, and departed England for France in 1762 in an effort to find a climate that would alleviate his suffering.

Sterne was at work on his celebrated comic novel during the year that his mother died, his wife was seriously ill, and he was ill himself with consumption.

Other major 18th century English novelists are Samuel Richardson ( 1689-1761 ), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded ( 1740 ) and Clarissa ( 1747-8 ); Henry Fielding ( 1707 – 54 ), who wrote Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling ( 1749 ); Laurence Sterne ( 1713 – 68 ) who published Tristram Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767 ; Oliver Goldsmith (? 1730-74 ) author of The Vicar of Wakefield ( 1766 ); Tobias Smollett ( 1721 – 71 ) a Scottish novelist best known for his comic picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle ( 1751 ) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker ( 1771 ), who influenced Charles Dickens ; and Fanny Burney ( 1752-1840 ), whose novels " were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen ," wrote Evelina ( 1778 ), Cecilia ( 1782 ) and Camilla ( 1796 ).

One of the earliest literary references to classical conditioning can be found in the comic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman ( 1759 ) by Laurence Sterne.

* Adler ( comics ), Luftwaffe pilot turned adventurer, the title character of a comic book series by René Sterne

The concept of a book intended essentially for display over perusal was mentioned much earlier by Michel de Montaigne in his essay Upon Some Verses of Virgil, first published in 1580: " I am vexed that my Essays only serve the ladies for a common movable, a book to lay in the parlor window ..." Almost two centuries later, Laurence Sterne in his 1759 comic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman advanced the more lighthearted view that " As my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and ... be no less read than the Pilgrim's Progress itself-and, in the end, prove the very thing Montaigne dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour window ..."

It was while living in the countryside, having failed in his attempts to supplement his income as a farmer and struggling with tuberculosis, that Sterne began work on his most famous novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the first volumes of which were published in 1759.

Aspects of this trip to France were incorporated into Sterne ’ s second novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, which was published at the beginning of 1768.

The novel was written during a period in which Sterne was increasingly ill and weak.

Sterne is best known for his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, for which he became famous not only in England, but throughout Europe.

Indeed, the novel, in which Sterne manipulates narrative time and voice, parodies accepted narrative form, and includes a healthy dose of " bawdy " humor, was largely dismissed in England as being too corrupt.

Sterne inserts sermons, essays and legal documents into the pages of his novel ; and he explores the limits of typography and print design by including marbled pages and, most famously, an entirely black page within the narrative.

Many of the innovations that Sterne introduced, adaptations in form that should be understood as an exploration of what constitutes the novel, were highly influential to Modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and more contemporary writers such as Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace.

In his novel Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne quotes extensively from Rabelais.

Second, in 2006 Coogan starred with Rob Brydon in Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and Bull Story, a self-referential film of the " unfilmable " self-referential novel Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.

* Tristram Shandy, a novel by Laurence Sterne

He wrote several books, including Life and Times of Laurence Sterne ( 1909 ) and The History of Henry Fielding ( 1918 ), and several books on the English novel.

Earlier precursors include Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, often cited as the first postmodernist novel, and The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton.

Tristram Shandy, a novel by Laurence Sterne, became a " cult " object in England and throughout Europe, with important cultural consequences among those who could afford to purchase books during the era of its publication.

In his multi-volume novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman ( 1759-1767 ), Laurence Sterne has his character Corporal Trim describe a Beguine.

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by the Irish author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death.

Because Sterne died before he could finish the novel, his long time friend John Hall-Stevenson ( who is also identified with the name Eugenius in the novel ) wrote a continuation.

Sterne came to the novel from a satirical background, while Smollett approached it from journalism.

Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett held a personal dislike for one another, and their works similarly offered up oppositional views of the self in society and the method of the novel.

Sterne came to the novel from a satirical background, while Smollett approached it from journalism.

For Sterne, the novel itself is secondary to the purpose of the novel, and that purpose was to pose difficult problems, on the one hand, and to elevate the reader, on the other ( with his Sentimental Journey ).

When Burns said: " The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a ' that "; when Sterne, in Tristram Shandy, said, " Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal, but gold and silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight ," what did these writers do but adopt — adopt without improving — Manly's fine saying to Freeman, in the first act: " I weigh the man, not his title ; ' tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better or heavier "?

He did not find Oxford wholly congenial to his intensely earnest spirit, but he read hard, and, as he afterwards said, " Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards ; passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution.

It was immortalised both on record and on a film that played in US theatres for a week in 1964 as well as being the subject of books written by cast members William Redfield and Richard L. Sterne.

Laurence Sterne ( 24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768 ) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman.

Laurence Sterne was born 24 November 1713 in Clonmel, County Tipperary.

His father, Roger Sterne, was an Ensign in a British regiment recently returned from Dunkirk.

Roger's regiment was disbanded on the day of Sterne ’ s birth, and within six months the family had returned to Yorkshire in northern England.

The first decade of Sterne ’ s life was spent moving from place to place as his father was reassigned throughout Ireland.

In 1724, his father took Sterne to Roger's wealthy brother, Richard, so that Sterne could attend Hipperholme Grammar School near Halifax ; Sterne never saw his father again as Roger was ordered to Jamaica where he died of a fever in 1731.

Sterne was admitted to a sizarship at Jesus College, Cambridge, in July 1733 at the age of 20.

Sterne seems to have been destined to become a clergyman, and was ordained as a deacon in March 1737 and as a priest in August, 1738.

Shortly thereafter Sterne was awarded the vicarship living of Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire ( 1713 – 1768 ).

Sterne ’ s life at this time was closely tied with his uncle, Dr. Jaques Sterne, the Archdeacon of Cleveland and Precentor of York Minster.

Sterne ’ s uncle was an ardent Whig, and urged Sterne to begin a career of political journalism which resulted in some scandal for Sterne and, eventually, a terminal falling-out between the two men.

Jaques Sterne was a powerful clergyman but a mean-tempered man and a rabid politician.

Sterne was lucky to attach himself to a diplomatic party bound for Turin, as England and France were still adversaries in the Seven Years ' War.