It has been widely rumoured that Laurence Sterne’s body was stolen from churchyard of St. George’s shortly after it was interred and sold to anatomists at Cambridge University. Circumstantially, it was said that his body was recognised and discreetly reinterred back in St George’s, in an unknown plot. [1]
Laurence Sterne was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican clergyman best known for his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, although he also published other works including sermons and memoirs and contributed to local politics. He died on 18 March 1768 aged 54.
At the age of 46, Sterne was living in the countryside and suffering from tuberculosis when he stepped away from managing his parishes and turned his full attention to writing for the rest of his life. His first long work, a sharp religious satire entitled A Political Romance infuriated the church and was burnt. In the same year, 1759, the first volumes of his long comic novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman were published, with seven more volumes following over the next seven years. The novel was unlike anything that had been published before, with its nonlinear narrative structure and its use of humour and satire, it was an immediate success making him famous in London and on the continent.
In his later years, Sterne was frequently bedridden and unable to write for extended periods of time and he travelled to France in search of a cure. Despite poor health, he continued to work on his final novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, which was published in 1768, a year after his death. Sterne died in his lodgings in London on 18 March 1768, at the age of 54 and was buried in the churchyard of St George’s, Hanover Square, in London.
Despite his relatively short life, Sterne left a lasting legacy in the literary world with his innovative and experimental writing style. His influence can be seen in the work of many later writers, including James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.