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Sterne, Laurence

Sterne, Laurence (1713–68),
Anglo-Irish cleric and novelist. Sterne's chosen literary persona Mr Yorick—witty, humorous, volatile, much possessed with death, memory, time, and melancholia—owes as much to Prince Hamlet as to his jester. He governs Tristram Shandy (1760–7) and A Sentimental Journey (1768) (both crammed with digressions on Hamlet), and, scandalously, Sterne's sermons, published as The Sermons of Mr Yorick (1760). Appropriately, Sterne's own skull was exhumed by grave-robbers (and recognized by an acquaintance, at an anatomy lecture).

Nicola Watson

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