Product Description
'Love is nothing without feeling.And feeling is still less without love.'

Celebrated in its own day as the progenitor of 'a school of sentimental writers', A Sentimental Journey (1768) has outlasted its many imitators because of the humour and mischievous eroticism that inform Mr Yorick's travels. Setting out to journey to France and Italy he gets little further than Lyons but finds much to appreciate, in contrast to contemporary travel writers whom Sterne satirizes in the figures of Smelfungus and Mundungus.A master of ambiguity and double entendre, Sterne is nevertheless as concerned as his peers with exploring the nature of virtue; unlike other writers of sentimental fiction Sterne insists on the inseparability of desire and feeling.

This new edition includes a selection from The Sermons of Mr Yorick, which shed light on the concerns of the Journey, The Journal to Eliza, which records Sterne's feelings as he languishes for the company of Eliza Draper, and A Political Romance, the satire on a local ecclesiastical squabble that was the catalyst for Sterne's literary career. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A great supplement for fans of Sterne
Most readers are familiar with Sterne for his more famous Tristram Shandy. This volume contains some of his other works. Personally, I found Tristram to be of a much higher caliber, mainly because it is a complete epic which covers so many of Sterne's theories and rantings. So, if you're encountering Sterne for the first time, go to Tristram. For fans wanting some more writings, this is a good collection.

The first section is A Sentimental Journey. We already have a part of a travelogue of Tristram in his self-titled work. In this one, it is the marvellous personage Yorick that undergoes the journey through Italy and France. The book in in the form of a ranty journal that supposedly draws from Sterne's own travels. He intended to publish 4 volumes but wrote 2 before other pursuits and eventually death caught up with him. In the work, his sentimentalism relaly comes through as he goes through various amusing incidents, tragic stories and semi-amorous adventures. All this is done with a certain dignity. The 2nd volume ends in a scene of planned abruption which I found amusing enough to justify the rest of the book.

I didn't read the next two pieces, the first one because I didn't want to pry into his private life and the second because it was hard to follow the context. The pieces are Journal to Eliza - a personal correspondence, and A Political Romance - his first published work which is a satire on a scandal which, with the proper background should be interesting.

The last section is a selection from the Sermons of Yorick, where the eccentric Shandean minister makes another appearance providing Sterne with an opportunity to make theological statements. These were very interesting, giving light to another side of Sterne. They are all based on a single biblical verse and explore its themes in termes of human experience.

The only possible inconvenience is that like many modern publications, this has endnotes rather than footnotes and because contextual explanations are necessary, you have to flip back and forth. Otherwise, a great insight into the writer and person behind Tristram. ... Read more

Product Description
At once endlessly facetious and highly serious, Sterne's great comic novel contains some of the best-known and best-loved characters in English literature--including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, and Dr. Slop--and boasts one of the most innovative and whimsical narrative styles in all literature. This revised edition of Sterne's extraordinary novel retains the text based on the first editions of the original nine volumes (with Sterne's later changes), adds two illustrations by William Hogarth, and expands and updates the introduction, bibliography, and notes, to make this the most critically up-to-date edition available. The text of the novel preserves, as far as possible, the appearance of Sterne's idiosyncratic typography and features such as black pages, marbled pages, blank pages, missing chapters and other devices. The introduction sheds light on the novel's innovations and influence and provides a biographical account of the author. Comprehensive notes identify the profusion of references and reveal previously overlooked sources. The book will appear in time for the 250th anniversary of the publication of first two volumes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (70)

Mixed Bag
Everyone should know, first off, that the Dover thrift edition is NOT a graphic adaptation.For some reason, Amazon has attached editorial reviews from the hardcover edition of the graphic novel version to this page.

Now, the book itself offers a range of experiences from delightfully hilarious to annoyingly tedious.Lots of the "funny" parts depend on an understanding of 18th-century social mores.I'm sure some of it went over my head but I'm enough of a nerd to have enjoyed most of the drollery.I think...

The story is whimsical, told all out of order by a scatterbrained, easily-distracted narrator.Tristram Shandy himself is hardly in the novel at all; aside from narrating it, he only appears momentarily as a newborn infant and then as a boy about 6 years old - and his role in both incidents seems peripheral to the carryings-on of the other characters.Each turn in the story reminds the author of something else, and he turns aside to tell stories inside of stories, each of which are necessary to give the reader some vital "background information" .. with the result that the main story hardly moves forward at all.It takes nearly 200 pages just for Tristram to be born! and even then the reader isn't quite sure it has happened since the conversations and minute actions of the other characters are magnified to such an importance that the narrator's own birth is hardly observed.For the most part this rambling comes across as "quirky and delightful" and the novel flows along quite pleasingly in spite (or perhaps because) of it.The digressions add layers to the story.

Except when they don't.The "chapter upon noses" which is a translation of a fictitious(?) Latin work by the great Slwakenbergius, has little bearing on the story.Like most of the book, it builds up to a climax and then stops short of resolution, leaving you to wonder what was the point.It leads nowhere, but at least it was interesting.The same cannot be said of Book VII, which is a sort of travel diary of Tristram (in the novel's "present" time) touring France by post-chaise.Although this is the only significant appearance of Tristram himself as a character in the book, it has absolutely nothing to do with the story/stories he was telling, and it is neither very interesting nor very funny.It serves as nothing but a pointless interruption, delaying the reader for 50 pages before getting to the part we were waiting for:Toby's courtship of the widow Wadman.

This last section goes along nicely for a while, and then the book stops.It doesn't end; it just stops right in the middle of a conversation, with the courtship unresolved and most of the reader's questions unanswered.This is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the entire novel, but I have to admit it's frustrating.I had trouble deciding whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars but I think it entertained me more than it exasperated me, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt ... and round up from 3.5.It's worth reading once, just for the experience - there's no other book quite like it - and the price of the Dover Thrift Edition can't be beat.

Great Find!
Peter Barker is a marvelous reader, and Sterne is a wild man writer.
Something to be savored and smiled at over time.Many times a laugh aloud!
Don't be in a hurry, or you'll miss mosst of the fun.

How to Ride a Hobby-Horse
At the end of Volume 6 of this work, Mr. Shandy as the teller of his own life story provides a drawing of his narrative line over the previous volumes.Each one is twisted beyond all recognition, of course, since he has been doubling back, digressing, and indeed doing pretty much everything except getting a move on.He promises faithfully that in Volume 7 his narrative will resemble nothing but the very straightest of lines - he's reached the hour of his own birth (in six books) and will proceed from that moment in strict chronology, utterly without interruption.At the beginning of the next volume, however, he suddenly tells us that the Devil is after him and races off to France in an attempt to outrun the old fox - he doesn't get back to his own story until Volume 8.

This gives you an idea of what you're in for."The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" consists primarily of the author's attempt to not tell a story - indeed, it's about practically everything in the world except its ostensible subject.While the narrator's interruptions and digressions are generally funny in themselves, there's an additional level of humor in the lengths to which he goes to get in his own way.It's a great read, but it makes things rather difficult when it comes to telling the story itself.

There's a plotline of sorts, to be sure, which has to do with the night of Tristram's birth and what a complicated project that turns out to be.In addition to that, Tristram amuses himself with chapters on the nature of obsessions (or hobby-horses, as he calls them), chapters on how to argue with your wife, chapters on sermon-making, chapters on chapters and even a chapter on digressions.This last, by the way, consists primarily of Tristram insisting that he does not have time to talk about digressions and will do it later, and when he comes to the end of the chapter immediately realizes that he has just written his chapter on digressions.Yes, it's a digression from the chapter on digressions that itself comprises the chapter on digressions.Whew.

Now, this whole business begins with Tristram complaining that his parents should have paid more attention to what they were doing at the moment he was conceived - it seems that his mother interrupted the marital act that night by suddenly asking her husband if he had remembered to wind up the clock.You can see from this initial interruption that "Tristram Shandy" bears a pretty consistent tone throughout, including the famous bit where Uncle Toby begins a sentence in Volume 1, Chapter 21, and doesn't get around to completing it until several chapters into Volume 2, Chapter 6 - a gap of about 25 pages.One might be tempted to think of this novel as just a nutty diversion from more serious matters.

This isn't entirely true.Structurally this thing looks like a Godawful mess, but then again Sterne lived at a time when the structure of the English novel was still under construction.More importantly, although the content of the novel veers all over everything, the thematic elements don't.What you get here is commentary, from a variety of angles, on the pernicious effects of taking yourself too seriously.Tristram's father, for instance, an intelligent man, has retreated into the country for uninterrupted study and thus come up with some of the screwiest notions in literature.He thinks, for instance, that a man's destiny is governed to an enormous extent by the size of his nose and by his first name, of which the name "Tristram" is by far the most destructive.So you can imagine how upset he gets when a faulty set of forceps flattens his baby son's nose at the very moment of birth, and when an incompetent cleric christens the boy by that horrid name a few minutes later.

All unbelievably ridiculous, of course, made more so by the careful, studious, and above all lengthy manner of telling.Tristram quotes all manner of ancient and contemporary scholars on these subjects, as indeed on all subjects.Thus we come to understand that this kind of pedantry, even on the most critical topic, makes fools of us all.

That is to say, what makes all these interruptions and diversions so hysterical is that the narrator actually thinks they're all necessary - he has his reasons for each and every one.He's not just a madman; on the contrary, he's so intent on demonstrating what he means that all he comes up with is nonsense.

Of course, no one should require 450 pages to communicate a point like that, so Sterne was careful to make all his sub-stories as entertaining as possible.He succeeded beautifully, too."Tristram Shandy" was a huge popular success, so much so that those who disliked it had to publish their disdain in the daily papers.Which is fine, except that many of them objected to the undeniably bawdy subject matter, declaring that literature ought to have a moral purpose behind it and decrying the vulgarity of popular taste.Sterne couldn't have come up with a better piece of nonsense if he'd tried - here were some of the generation's brightest minds getting as finicky about a harmless amusement as the biggest fools in the novel itself about their various hobby-horses.The author might as well have jumped up and yelled "Gotcha!"

You might take that as a warning.If you read this thing resisting its diversions from what you might consider good sense or taste, it will trip you up on every page.So just enjoy the ride.

Benshlomo says, What?

Excellent
It was in wonderful condition and came in a timely manner.I'm quite happy with the purchase!

Easier and cheaper than the bookstores
This was an easy way to buy my daughter's books for college.We will do it this way from now on. ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY.If good and ill nature equally operated upon mankind, I might have saved myself the trouble of this apology; for it is manifest, by the reception the following discourse hath met with, that those who approve it are a great majority among the men of taste; yet there have been two or three treatises written expressly against it, besides many others that have flirted at it occasionally, without one syllable having been ever published in its defence, or even quotation to its advantage, that I can remember, except by the polite author of a late discourse between a deist and a Socinian.Therefore, since the book seems calculated to live at least as long as our language, and our taste admits no great alterations, I am content to convey some apology along with it.The greatest part of that book was finished about thirteen years since (1696), which is eight years before it was published. The author was thenyoung, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. By the assistance of some thinking, and much conversation, he had endeavoured to strip himself of as many real prejudices as he could ; I say real ones, because under the notion of prejudices he knew to what dangerous heights some men have proceeded. Thus prepared, he thought the numerous and gross corruptions in religion and learning might furnish matter for a satire that would be useful and diverting: he resolved to proceed in a manner that should be altogether new, the world having been already too long nauseated with endless repetitions upon every subject. The abuses in religion he proposed to set forth in the allegory of the coats and the three brothers, which was to make up the body of the discourse. Those in learning he chose to introduce by way of digressions. He was then a young... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Journey of discovery
Even for modern readers, "A Sentimental Journey" (published 1768)is as startlingly innovative as Sterne's celebrated "Tristram Shandy". Sterne's ability to crystallize the minute details of experience - which may be down to a few seconds only - is reminiscent ofVirginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse". Indeed, Woolf admired this book.

This is by no means an easy read.The 18th-century prose is difficult; the book is larded with Frenchisms and Biblical or classical allusions; the complex, slow narrative often requires re-reading.But the rewards are great!It's wise, deeply comical, and incredibly perceptive.

There are several helpful reviews below dealing with the aspect of "sentimentality", and so I will just single out two things which appealed to me:

1.STERNE AND BODY LANGUAGE.Sterne shows an almost 20th-century appreciation of body language.In fact, I believe he might have been the first to identify it as such.His chapter, "The Translation", highlights the importance of being able to interpret subtle physical hints, like a language:"There is not a secret so aiding to the progress of sociality, as to get master of this _shorthand_, and be quick in rendering the several turns of looks and limbs, with all their inflections and delineations, into plain words." How visionary!

2.STERNE AND THE FRENCH.Ever since Shakespeare inserted a scene in "cod French" into _Henry V_, actually ever since the Norman Conquest and up to Monty Python and beyond, the English have revelled in mocking the French and their language.His Continental travelling gives Sterne the perfect excuse to do this.At one point he differentiates between "tant pis" (= "never mind" - where there is nothing to be gained) and "tant mieux" (= so much the better - where there IS an advantage).He also has a hilarious section on the grades of French swearing:first "Diable!", then "Peste!" and finally the words that he won't repeat.In all cases, Sterne carefully shows the social niceties of these expressions.

The protagonist, Yorick, has various adventures of lust and feeling with women and other typically travelish things like losing his passport that we can all relate to.He's tender, obscene, learned, funny, companionable, and above all, readable - if tough.

Not just for scholars
Like Sterne's other works, _A Sentimental Journey_ is extraordinarily playful. His works are the eighteenth century's postmodernist works of play. They have lots of textual puzzles and tend toward the absurd. For example, the Mr. Yorick of the _Journey_ is also a character in Sterne's major novel _Tristram Shandy_ and is also the name under which he publishes his own sermons (he was a clergyman). The text is very "fragmentary" and the novel even jokes about that itself, labelling parts of itself "fragment." In these ways, the _Journey_ is fun and modern.

But it is also indicative of an important eighteenth-century trend--sensibility or sentimentalism. All eras have their debates about the relationshp between the individual and society and this is one eighteenth-century answer. This opinion has nothing to do with "rights" but everything to do with "sympathy." Mr. Yorick, the "sentimental traveller," relates to other human beings through sympathetic physical responses, most notably the "pulses" and "beats" of his heart and hands for various women.

Therefore, this book is a good way to get into a very different historical mindset while at the same time seeing the roots of some of the literary forms of today.

Only clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can resist it
A Sentimental Journey is a fabulous book for so many reasons. Laurence Sterne was an immensely influential writer in the 18th century--his major works, Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy, were responses to the travel narrative and newly born novel, respectively. His writing is essential to scholars of the 18th century--he is referenced in Austen's Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, Brown's The Power of Sympathy, Foster's The Coquette and Tyler's The Contrast. To understand and appreciate his novel is to have a better appreciation and love of the works that built their structures on his foundation. And yet it is original, as Yorick says himself, "both my travels and observations will be altogether of a different cast from any of my fore-runners."

Yet it is not solely for historical benefit that one should read Sentimental Journey. The adventures and amours of Sterne's semi-autobiographical Yorick are delightful. One of the most romantic passages I've read in a book occurs when Yorick inadvertantly takes the hand of a woman and describes in detail the thrill of merely holding it. Granted, hers is not the only hand he will hold, but he writes so wonderfully, candidly and engagingly that it is extremely difficult to hold his passions against the sentimental Yorick. His scene with the starling locked in a cage is pertinent and a touching commentary on slavery. What a guy! My only complaint is the editor of this edition does not feel it necessary to translate the French-of which there is plenty-making some passages difficult to understand at best. However,this is a sentimental journey that I will gladly take over and over.

Brilliant.Absolutely hillarious satire
Sterne befuddles and delights readers and critics alike in A Sentimental Journey.He takes the fashionable travel log of the time and satarizes it. Contemporary critics had a fit over its supposedly bawdy nature, yet somemodern readers may over look its sublte innuendo.The form of the novel isquite unlike anything that had preceeded it, thus is important for anyscholars.Most importanly, however, the book is funny and fun to read.

The amorous adventures of a gentleman in 18th century France
This autobiographical acount by Sterne of his amorous progress through France and Northern Italy is surely one of the most delightful books ever written. Composed as he lay dying of tuberculosis, the book nonetheless encaptures the author's renowned zest for life as well as the libertine spirit of the age in which he lived. The journey down through France to Northern Italy is the perfect vehicle for an excursion into the nature of human sensibility, and from the moment that this cultured Anglo-Irish cleric sets foot in Calais, the reader is treated to a seies of exquisite encounters with the fairer sex. Rarely has an author transmitted so well his understanding of the psychological complexity of women, or the pleasure he takes in their company. Engaging, perceptive and witty, this is a book whiich cannot fail to leave an imprint on the imagination. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ars longa, opinion brevis
Dr. Johnson (he of the first dictionary) famously said about this book, An odd thing will not last. Little did he know. Dr. Johnson is no longer much read (though he is mentioned), butSterne's odd masterpiece is read and chuckled over three hundred years after being written.
Which just shows that the only definition of Art is: That which lasts. If it lasted, it is Art. If it didn't, then it isn't. (Or wasn't.) Opinions of individuals do not count, only those of Humanity as a whole, which votes with its Collective Attention over dozens, or preferably hundreds of years. Think about it the next time someone flatulates about the latest painter or writer of genius. Tell him to wait a hundred years before he can be sure.
... Read more

Product Description

ReadHowYouWant publishes a wide variety of best selling books in Large and Super Large fonts in partnership with leading publishers. EasyRead books are available in 11pt and 13pt. type. EasyRead Large books are available in 16pt, 16pt Bold, and 18pt Bold type. EasyRead Super Large books are available in 20pt. Bold and 24pt. Bold Type. You choose the format that is right for you.

This is Volume Volume 1 of 3-Volume Set.To purchase the complete set, you will need to order the other volumes separately: to find them, search for the following ISBNs: 9781427006769, 9781427006776

The work that assured Sterne an everlasting place in English literature. It humorously chronicles the life of Tristram Shandy; this comic account is intertwined with his thoughts and philosophies regarding various issues. The novel is typographically very unusual in a style that is Sterne's own all the way.

To find more titles in your format, Search in Books using EasyRead and the size of the font that makes reading easier and more enjoyable for you.

Customer Reviews (1)

Warning:This is only the first of 3 volumes
This book is only 1 of 3 volumes. That fact is not indicated on the item display. It has good large print, but one would have to buy the other two volumes (presumably at a similar price, if they are available. This would mean a price of about $54 for the whole novel. Too much for an OCR paperback. Amazon has agreed to accept the book as a return and refund my purchase price and shipping. ... Read more

Product Description
A Sentimental Journey is a novel by the Irish-born English author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death, about his visits to Italy and France. ... Read more

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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.' ... Read more

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Product Description
After his death in 1768, the famous novelist Laurence Sterne did not rest undisturbed in his grave. While rumours of the theft and dissection of Sterne's corpse circulated in the anatomy schools, numerous writers took possession of his literary body of work. New forms of Sternean entertainment were produced by literary mimics who impersonated the author through the medium of print, impersonations which included startling and unique interpretations of Sterne's character and fiction. Warren Oakley introduces two new critical concepts to eighteenth-century literary study, bodysnatching and mimicry, to understand these texts that have been neglected and overlooked in Sterne studies. This lucid account reveals the personal stories of such literary mimics, the creative techniques they employed and the consequences of their actions upon the posthumous perception of Sterne, the man and his cadaverous goods. ... Read more

Product Description
The sixth volume of the Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne contains scholarly editions of two works of Sterne's last year of life, A Sentimental Journey and the Bramine's Journal (Journal to Eliza). As with the first five volumes of the series (Tristram Shandy, the Sermons, and their annotations), the texts are presented as clean texts, with all textual and scholarly apparatus gathered at the end of the volume, including collations with existing manuscripts, a historical collation of the first three editions of Journey, and a comprehensive listing of all emendations made to the texts. While relying on the scholarly edition of Journey by Gardner Stout (1967), this new edition has in many ways, both textual and annotative, altered his earlier work; and it presents as well the first truly scholarly edition of the Journal since Lewis Perry Curtis's edition in Letters (1935).

This book continues the tradition of the Florida Edition, providing an abundance of materials that are intended to elucidate but not interpret Sterne's writings. New and Day build on Stout's fine annotations, but they add the commentaries of the intervening 35 years, along with some new recoveries and discoveries, and some corrections to Stout's edition. The annotations to the Journal go well beyond Curtis's commentary, especially in drawing a strong relationship between the Journey and the Journal. As the editors argue in the extensive introduction, the two texts must be read together in order to be understood properly.

Sterne's writings in his last year belong together as the complex representation of his hopes and fears, his loves and his longings, as he prepared to face death and judgment. The dual presentation in this volume will not only enhance the reputation of the Bramin's Journal, but will bring to light aspects of A Sentimental Journey previously unnoted.

Melvyn New is professor of English at the University of Florida and general editor of the Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, five volumes of which have been published. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Portrait of the Artist as a Dying Man
Laurence Sterne may have been one of the most peculiar authors who ever lived.Spending most of his life as a provincial Anglican clergyman (albeit a randy one) with a wife he didn't get along with and on whom he cheated compulsively, troubled by the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him, he became famous overnight in his mid-forties with the publication of the first volumes of Tristram Shandy in 1760.While Sterne has never lacked for either admirers or detractors (some of the former are Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Nietzsche and Virginia Woolf; examples of the latter are Samuel Johnson and William Makepeace Thackeray), he has somehow survived as one of the magnificent oddities of English literature.

Since the 1970s, Sterne's greatest champion has been Dr. Melvyn New of the University of Florida, whose edition of Sterne's Works has become the standard texts of Tristram Shandy and his Sermons.Now Dr. New has added a sixth volume to the series, consisting of A Sentimental Journey and Continuation of the Bramine's Journal.

At the time Sterne began A Sentimental Journey in 1767 (he never finished it -- what we have are the first two volumes of a projected four), he was at a crossroads in his career as a writer.The later volumes of Tristram Shandy had not sold as well or caused the stir of the earlier volumes, and Sterne may have felt that he had taken its strain of satiric ribaldry as far as it could go -- at any rate, he decided to change course, and to indulge in the then-popular mode of fictional pathos.To elicit a furtive tear, rather than a sly guffaw, was now his aim, and whether this was simple careerism or a genuine change of heart is for each reader to decide (although the evidence of the Bramine's Journal, never intended for publication, indicates that the latter was most likely the case).

The text of A Sentimental Journey doesn't present insurmountable difficulties (Sterne, unlike Swift, always scrupulously prepared his works for the press, and in any event Dr. New has the precedent, graciously acknowledged, of Gardner Stout's 1967 University of California Press edition), but the Florida edition, as impeccable as its scholarship is, is more interesting for what it doesn't do than for what it does.Unlike the Stout edition, in which a tiny island of text can be overwhelmed by a tsunami of annotation, New's Florida text is unencumbered by its nonetheless impressive scholarly apparatus, which is printed in the back.Dr. New is that academic rarity -- a scholar who actually gives a damn about the non-scholarly reader.The result, as with the rest of the Florida Sterne, is an edition that manages to have it both ways -- impeccable scholarship that does not overwhelm a text that is presented in a way so that it can be enjoyed for its own sake.Would that there were more editors like him.

Sterne is the poet of nuance (although at times his more earthy side takes over -- at one point he asks a woman hidden from him by a curtain "if she wanted anything," and gets back the reply, "Rien que pisser," which means just what you think it means), and there are times when the more lachrymal sentiments of the late 18th Century, so trendy then, feel strained now.But he sometimes managed to combine his empathy for others with his appreciation of the odd and the grotesque, as when he notices, at the opera comique, a dwarf with his view blocked by a "tall, corpulent German, near seven feet high, who stood directly betwixt him and all possibility of his seeing either the stage or the actors."

Mostly, however, A Sentimental Journey is about the exhilarating minutiae of traveling, unencumbered (as Sterne was at times when he made the journeys in France and Italy that inspired the book) by either wife of child, and moving through, as he mentions several times, a country with which his own was, at that time, at war."I seldom go to the place I set out for," Sterne comments at one point, and the unpredictability of his peregrinations make the book feel more like life, and less like literature, than most books of his time -- or even ours.He can manage a delicacy of feeling combined with an intricacy of expression that make him seem a precursor of Proust.

The other work contained in the volume, Continuation of the Bramine's Journal (one wishes that Dr. New had been a tad less pedantically accurate and chosen instead the less holographically correct but inarguably more effective title that Sterne biographer Wilbur L. Cross gave it: the Journal to Eliza) is a diary kept by Sterne in the last year of his life and intended for a 23-year-old married woman named Eliza Draper, with whom Sterne had become hopelessly infatuated (an infatuation all the more hopeless since the lady's husband was in Bombay, where Eliza would soon join him).At their parting Sterne began keeping a journal that he assumed would be reciprocated by Eliza, and that at some point they would meet again and share their respective sentiments.Never published during his lifetime, it makes Sterne seem either hopelessly romantic or more than a little pathetic -- depending, I suppose, on one's age and/or gender.At any event, Sterne never saw Eliza again.

Together, these two works of the final year of Sterne's life give us both an impressive and moving Portrait of the Artist as a Dying Man, and Dr. New and the University Press of Florida are to be congratulated for their persistence in putting out, over a period of three decades, so splendid an edition of a classic author.This latest volume more than lives up to the high standards of the previous five, and should be read by anyone even remotely curious about one of the most curious and brilliant authors ever to write in English. ... Read more

Product Description
Narrated by Parson Yorick, this is a novel without a plot and a travel book that is oddly lacking in descriptions of fine buildings or splendid scenery. It illuminates the emotions of the assortment of characters Yorick encounters along the way. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

thanks
book arrived well within the expected time frame; book was in fabulous condition.will recommend seller to friends.

boring journey
maybe this book is just dated (im being generous).it kinda reminds me of Nash's unfortunate traveller or anatomy of melancholy only less entertaining.naw, more like those essays in the tabloids from the era like the tattler - not even that good really.there are some moments of being clever but never truly brilliant or entertaining.

I realy wanted to read shandy but that dreaful film ruined my ability to get past the first page - i guess i need to wait until the bad after taste is gone. whatever - journey is truly forgettable - not worth the time whatsoever.i probably should only give it one star.

THE GREATGRANDFATHER OF JAMES JOYCE ULYSSES
a similar seemingly pointless but profoundly significant AND FUNNY epic delivered under the guise of a trivial travelogue, written by a fellow Irishman. Nice to know Joyce read his Sterne as well as his daily newspaper while traveling in Trieste.

This parody must be read and enjoyed on its own terms. Recent academic commentaries are helpful in understanding, a fact which does not detract from this work.

I wish I wish
I wish I could go around France and Italy and chat it up like this fellow does.

I also wish I could write like him.Every once in a while I run across a writer who can really tell a tale and uses English as a painter uses oils.

Ben

IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSION
The reader who expects Sterne's "Sentimental Journey" to provide something of an ordered travelogue will be disappointed. It is a seemingly artless web of loosely connnected episodes, anecdotes, impressions, musings. There is no structured narrative - one digression leads to another; some are amusing, some are absurd, some are thoughtful, but all of them are entertaining.

My current rereading of the "Journey" was itself a digression. I had been watching a movie version of "Mansfield Park" that diverged significantly from Jane Austen's novel. In one scene (which is not in the novel) Henry Crawford tries to win Fanny Price's approval by reading her a passage from the "Sentimental Journey". (It is the scene with the caged starling calling "I can't get out - I can't get out" - a very poignant and appropriate selection, in my view). So you see - I had to reread both "Mansfield Park" and the "Journey" to fully appreciate the connection; and I don't regret it.

The narrator of the "Journey" is Parson Yorick, a characterintroduced in Sterne's "Tristram Shandy", who owes as much to Shakespeare's jester as to Cervantes' Don Quixote. As he tells it, the journey came about in a haphazard manner. He had forgotten that England was at war with France and that he would need a passport. This leads to all sorts of complications and adventures, but in the end everything turns out just fine. His encounters with beggars and princes, innkeepers and shopkeepers are amusing and often revealing. The many temptations put in his way by mysterious ladies and obliging filles de chambre temporarily distract him from his purpose - but what is his purpose? The journey itself is the object of his quest.

Some of his observations are rather sobering; e.g.,he concludes that we advance in life not by the favors we bestow but by the favors we receive, and that the surest way to success is through shameless flattery. Every politician knows that - but are the rest of us ready to admit it? There is a streak of cynicism running through Sterne's lightheartedness. Even the story of the starling, which supposedly teaches the narrator the value of freedom, ends on a note of bitter irony: the bird is passed fondly from hand to hand, but no one sets it free.

As Sterne weaves into his tale characters and episodes from "Tristram Shandy",another digression is looming ahead: now we simply have to reread "Tristram Shandy"! ... Read more

Product Description
Best known today for the innovative satire and experimental narrative of Tristram Shandy (1759-67), Laurence Sterne was no less famous in his time for A Sentimental Journey (1768) and for his controversial sermons. Sterne spent much of his life as an obscure clergyman in rural Yorkshire. But he brilliantly exploited the sensation achieved with the first instalment of Tristram Shandy to become, by his death in 1768, a fashionable celebrity across Europe. In this Companion, specially commissioned essays by leading scholars provide an authoritative and accessible guide to Sterne's writings in their historical and cultural context. Exploring key issues in his work, including sentimentalism, national identity, gender, print culture and visual culture, as well as his subsequent influence on a range of important literary movements and modes, the book offers a comprehensive new account of Sterne's life and work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An amazingly-told tale of an 18th Century family
Have you ever wanted to read a book where the author decides to "rip out" one of the chapters, or leaves a blank page for you to 'draw' one of the characters?Would you enjoy an 18th-Century story which takes manychapters before the hero is born?The tale is touchingly told.Thecharacters are real, and constantly fascinating.It's not their fault thattheir story is frequently interrupted by outlandish "digressions"on the part of an author so creative that his modern descendants areconsidered to be Joyce and Beckett as well as many others.Would youenjoy a chapter about Chapters?About buttonholes?About whether parentsand their children are kin to each other?A chapter on curses?LaurenceSterne has so much trouble getting Walter and Toby Shandy downstairs thathe calls in the "critics" to do it.Advice on reading suchan unusual, even unique book:read the first several chapters, then stopand reread them.Continue that process and soon the book will feel quitefamiliar, and that's when the fun starts!Walter loves arguments aboutanything.Uncle Toby enjoys building military models.Tristram is quitebusy just trying to get born and baptized with the correct name.Hismother Elizabeth argues with her husband Walter about midwives and theirmethods.(Their wedding contract is here for you to peruse...it causessome problems itself.)This volume "3" consists of the Noteson the text (which is found in volumes "1" and "2".) Amazon also lists several less expensive paperback editions of the novel,the preferred one being the Oxford World Classics Edition. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: Appleton; Publication date: 1912; Subjects: Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768; History / General; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more