Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel

"Tristram is the Fashion," Sterne gleefully wrote of his masterpiece, Tristram Shandy , in 1760. This study reads Sterne's writing alongside other trends and texts of the time, showing how Sterne created and sustained his own vogue through self-conscious play on his rivals' work. The result is a highly original account of a major early novelist, and of the way his writing reveals and defines what one witness called "this Shandy -Age."