London: W. Flexney, 1762

The early 1760s saw a spate of satirical pamphlets that parody Tristram Shandy‘s content and style, of which The clockmakers outcry is perhaps the most famous example: it takes its cue from Tristram’s account of his own conception, in which he describes how his father regularly saw to the ‘little family concernments’ of winding the family clock – and other matters besides – on the first Sunday of every month, ‘to get them all out of the way at one time’. Sterne’s typography similarly offered ample scope for easy copying: Tristram’s abundant use of asterisks, for instance, quickly became a short-hand by which his imitators mocked his pretence to delicacy in replacing rude words with stars. Uncle Toby’s suggestion that Mrs Shandy refuses to see the male midwife because she ‘does not care to let a man come so near her ****’ was particularly popular among the pamphleteers, as The life and amours of Hafen Slawkenbergius, author of the Institute of Noses (1762) suggests, whilst also making reference to another Sternean euphemism, the nose.
Oates.367(2), p. 1