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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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LAURENCE STERNE (1713 - 1768) The great novelist, while a clergyman in Sutton,near York, paid many visits to his eccentric friend John Hall Stevenson (1718-85) at Skelton Castle (Crazy Castle), though he seems not to have become a member of the boisterous club of squires and clerics known as ’the demoniacks’. In 1767 he and Stevenson raced along Saltburn beach in chariots. Sterne made use of the castle library and is supposed to have written part of Tristram Shandy there. Stevenson himself appears as Eugenius, a wise counsellor, in Sterne’s novels. Stevenson published his own rather Sternean Fables for Grown Gentleman (1761-70) and Crazy Tales (1762).
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