Thanks to Kerry at Hungry Like the Woolf for pointing to this post at Caustic Cover Critic on the Visual Editions’ The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Additional pictures of the edition can be found at Visual Editions’ Flickr page (above photo from that page) More pictures of the book from A Practice […]

One of the unique marbled pages from Volume III Picture source In which I bid a fond farewell to the Shandy clan. When putting a book back on the bookshelf or returning it to the library I usually don’t consciously think whether I’ll revisit it again. So where does Tristram Shandy fall? “For those who […]

Thomas Patch: Sterne and Death“This is not a digression from it, but the work itself” — Pliny the Younger (epigraph to Volumes VII and VIII) If I have joked too facetiously with anything, by the muses and the graces and all the power of the poets, I beseech thee not to mistake me” — Julius […]

Pages from Volume VI, Chapter 40 Picture sourceIf I should speak too jocosely, this bit of liberty you will indulgently grant me – Horace If anyone should censure [me] as too light for a proper churchman or too biting for a decent Christian, it is not I but Democritus who speaks (Latin) – Erasmus — […]

Frontispiece of Volume III Designed by William Hogarth, engraved by Simon François Ravenet (the elder) Picture sourceI do not fear the opinions of the ignorant mob, but I ask that they spare my little book, in which I always proposed to pass from the mirthful to the serious, and from the serious to the mirthful […]

Frontispiece and title page from Volume 1 (7th edition) “Trim’s reading the Sermon to my Father” Picture sourceMen are tormented with the Opinions they have of Things, and not by the Things themselves. — epigraph to Volumes I and II (from the Stoic Epicetus as translated by Montaigne) It has taken me a while to […]