Laurence Sterne

Laurence Sterne was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric. He is best known for his comic novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, published from 1759 to 1767, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published in 1768. Sterne grew up in a military family, travelling mainly in Ireland. He was born in 1713 and died in 1768. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge, on a sizarship and was ordained a priest in 1738. While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741, and in 1759 he wrote an ecclesiastical satire, A Political Romance, which embarrassed the church and was burned.