unhappy one; in 1758 Elizabeth had a breakdown. In
the meantime, Sterne had become famous for his
numerous extramarital affairs. The most significant of
these liaisons (just a year before Sterne’s death) was to
Elizabeth Draper, the wife of an East Indian Company
official, to whom Sterne wrote Journal to Eliza. Like
Sterne’s sermons and other nonfictional writings, the
journal is generally only available in complete collections of his works. For fairly obvious reasons, it was
not published in Sterne’s lifetime.
The vicar Laurence Sterne, known as a wit, an
eccentric, and a practical joker whose behavior was
often shocking for a man of the cloth, occasionally
published in the early years of his career, including
some sermons and The History of a Warm Coat (1759),
a political SATIRE on church politics, which was burned
by church members. However, there is nothing in the
basic facts of Sterne’s pre-1760 life that would prepare
one for the publication of TRISTRAM SHANDY. By this
time, Sterne had settled in Yorkshire. R. & J. Dodsley
of London published the novel’s first two volumes on
January 1, 1760. Like all succeeding volumes, they
were extremely popular. Volumes three through six
were published the following year. Unfortunately,
Sterne’s health again failed him, and he spent several
years traveling in France and Italy in search of a more
favorable climate.
While Sterne was not Tristram, there is little doubt
that this experience changed the mood of the novel
and indeed directly influenced its later content. Volumes seven and eight were published in 1765. The
ninth and final volume was published in 1767 and was
420 STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS
followed by a short and comparatively minor novel, A
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (through France and Italy). Much
of this later writing shows the influence of Sterne’s
travels in his later years, as well as a feeling of melancholy brought on by his failing health.
The same year (1767) that Tristram 「ran out of