Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read...' Sterne's great comic novel
is the fictional autobiography of Tristram Shandy, a hero who fails even to get
born in the first two volumes. It contains some of the best-known and best-love
d characters in English literature, including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson
Yorick, Dr Slop and the Widow Wadman. Beginning with Tristram's conception, the
novel recounts his progress in 'this scurvy and disasterous world of ours', incl
uding his misnaming during baptism and his accidental circumcision by a falling
sash-window at the age of five; unsurprisingly, Tristram declares that he has be
en 'the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune'.
