Burn all 500 copiesSourced
A satire embarrassed the archbishop.
He ordered all 500 copies burned.
Laurence Sterne published A Political Romance under his own name in 1759, satirising a dispute inside the church. Embarrassed that the dispute had become public, the Archbishop of York ordered its 500 copies burned. Sterne complied, but a few copies in other hands survived.
The order to erase it
became part of its story.
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Laurence Sterne · Wikimedia contributors
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Reviewed: 2026-10-01