What personal hardships did Laurence Sterne face while writing Tristram Shandy?

While writing his masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne faced significant personal turmoil. During the period he began the novel, he suffered the deaths of both his mother and his uncle. Simultaneously, his wife experienced a severe mental health crisis and threatened suicide.

These events occurred just as his initial satirical draft was rejected by his printer, leaving him in a state of profound distress. Sterne later remarked that every sentence of the novel was written under the "greatest heaviness of heart." This emotional burden influenced the tone of his work, leading him to soften his satire and infuse the narrative with a sympathetic, melancholic humor that balanced the comedy with a sense of tragedy.1