Laurence Sterne’s masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, is seldom read any more outside of graduate seminars. This is a sad fate for the author whom Nietszche deemed “the most liberated spirit of all time,” and whose style, in its day, was considered “the most rapid, the most happy, the most idiomatic of any that is to be found.… [T]he pure essence of English conversational style.” The novel was wildly popular for years after its appearance. As the enthusiastic James Boswell rhymed, “Who has not Tristram Shandy read?/ Is any mortal so ill-bred?”
The book’s initial success was due in no small part to its heavy flirtation with obscenity. Such smut was considered bad enough, by certain critics, when the book was published anonymously; when it became known that its author was an Anglican minister, it caused an outright scandal. One correspondent in a popular magazine of the day voiced a widespread objection: “[I]t were greatly to be wished he had been more sparing in the use of indecent expressions. Indecent! Nay, even downright gross and obscene expressions are frequently to be met with throughout the book.” This revulsion was shared by Samuel Richardson, at that time the torchbearer of high decorum in fiction: “One extenuating circumstance attends [Sterne’s] works, that they are too gross to be inflaming.… [H]is own character as a clergyman seems much impeached by printing such gross and vulgar tales, as no decent mind can endure without extreme disgust!”
All this notwithstanding, Sterne was always able
