Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey (Modern Library)

About this book

Tristram Shandy provoked a literary sensation when it first appeared in a series of installments between 1759 and 1767. The ribald high-spirited book prompted Diderot to hail Sterne as the English Rabelais. An ingeniously structured novel (about writing a novel) that fascinates like a verbal game of chess Tristram Shandy is both a joyful celebration of the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction and a wry demonstration of its limitations. Many view this picaresque masterpiece as the precursor of the modern novel. A Sentimental Journey which came out in 1768 begins as a travelogue. Yet it ends as a treasury of portraits sketches and philosophical musings for as Virginia Woolf observed: A Sentimental Journey for all its levity and wit is based upon something fundamentally philosophic--the philosophy of pleasure.