'Christopher Thomson was a "zealous" Methodist until he discovered Shakespeare, Miilton, Sterne and Dr Johnson at a circulating library. When his absence from Sunday chapel was noticed, "I was called to account for it; by way of defence I pleaded my desire for, and indulgence in, reading. This appeared rather to aggravate than serve my cause. It was evidently their opinion, that all books, except such as they deemed religious, ones ought not be read by young men. I ventured somewhat timidly to hint, that it was possible for a young man to read novels, and other works of fiction, and still keep his mind free from irreligion and vice...".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
"Within the last month I have read Tristram Shandy, Brydone's Sicily and Malta, and Moore's Travels in France," D[orothy] W[ordsworth] wrote in March 1796."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
Frances Burney at seventeen observes that she is about "to charm myself for the third time with poor Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey'."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
H. J. Jackson notes Edmund Ferrars's annotations to his copy of Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey: "A note on the title page indicates that Ferrars acquired this two-volume set in 1772. He annotated it very heavily, marking some passages, keeping an index on the flyleaves, introducing biographical and bibliographical information on the title page, and recording cross-references to works by Sterne and many other writers within the text."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Ferrars Print: Book
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'In the even Mr Tipper read to me part of a -I know not what to call it but "Tristram Shandy".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Tipper Print: Book
'Who is this Yorick? you are pleased to ask me. You cannot, I imagine have looked into his books: execrable I cannot but call them; for I am told that the third and fourth volumes are worse, if possible, than the two first; which, only, I have had the patience to run through. One extenuating circumstance attends his works, that they are too gross to be inflaming'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
November 19, 1880 [Paris] 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker [sic], which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble, he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'For three years I continued a regular subscriber to the circulating library, during which time I read various works, including Milton's, Shakespeare's, Sterne's, Dr Johnson's, and many others. It was a usual practice for me to sit up to read after the family had retired for the night. I remember it was on one of these occasions that I read Lewis's "Monk". On rising from my seat to go to bed, I was so impressed with dongeon horror, that I took the candle and ? up stairs, not daring to look either right or left, lest some Lady Angela should plunge a dagger into me!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
'I literally saw nothing but your ear for a whole hour one night--it is perfectly unlike any ear in Nature--& as Tristram Shandy might say requires a Chapter in itself'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'Sterne has published two little volumes, called, "Sentimental Travels". They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely preferable to his tiresome "Tristram Shandy", of which I never could get through three volumes. In these there is great good nature and strokes of delicacy.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
'Sterne has published two little volumes, called, "Sentimental Travels". They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely preferable to his tiresome "Tristram Shandy", of which I never could get through three volumes. In these there is great good nature and strokes of delicacy.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
'James is the delight of our lives; he is quite an uncle Toby's annuity to us.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Once, for instance, I recollect that to fill up one of those aweful hiatus in conversation that occur at times in spite of all one's efforts to the contrary - and to entertain Miss M., I took up a Tristram Shandy; and read her one of the very best jokes within the boards of the book - Ah-h-h-h! sighed Miss M. and put on a look of right tend[er] melancholy!! - Now. - Did the smallest glimmering of reason appea[r]? Never.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Letter II to Miss Harriet Reid of Glasgow, April 28 1773 '?he shewed so much ingenuity in discovering faults in every thing, that I burst out a laughing, and said we were certainly haunted by the ghost of Smelfungus, of whom Sterne give [sic] such an amusing account. By the bye, we had just that morning passed, ?with reverence due?, the monument of the original Smelfungus, which rises near his native spot, beside his favourite lake, which he delights to describe in Humphrey Clinker.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter XLIII To Miss Dunbar, Boath/ Laggan April 11, 1803, 'Surely you have seen Sterne?s Letters to Eliza; if not, do without delay read them. It is her monument I am describing ?. '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Dunbar April 11 1803 'Surely you have seen Sterne?s Letters to Eliza; if not, do without delay read them. It is her monument I am describing ?. '
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'read Sterne & the 2nd Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Tristram Shandy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Tristram Shandy - Sentimental Journey - Zadig and Clarke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Tristram Shandy - Sentimental Journey - Zadig and Clarke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Friday Feb. 27th. [...] Read Tristram Shandy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Sterne's Sentimental Journey'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[following transcribed passage on 'gravity,' from Tristram Shandy I.ii]
'Insight vitiated by instinct of self defence -- probably typical of Sterne, whom I have begun to read. How did he discover the art of leaving out what he wanted to say? And why was it lost again until our own time. Can nothing liberate English fiction from conscientiousness? S. clearly a g[rea]t writer and his philosophy of life almost good and quite good in quotations: "Look at little me" spoils it in the bulk.
'But (now finishing T.S.): what character drawing! [goes on to comment further]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'A book of travels, lately published under the title of [italics] Coriat Junior [end italics], and written by Mr. Paterson, was mentioned. Johnson said, this book was in imitation of Sterne, and not of Coriat, whose name Paterson had chosen as a whimsical one. "Tom Coriat (said he) was a humourist about the court of James the First. He had a mixture of learning, of wit, and of buffoonery. He first travelled through Europe, and published his travels. He afterwards travelled on foot through Asia, and had made many remarks; but he died at Mandoa, and his remarks were lost".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'I censured some ludicrous fantastick dialogues between two coach horses and other such stuff, which Baretti had lately published. He joined with me and said, "Nothing odd will do long. 'Tristram Shandy' did not last".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'the famous Tristram Shandy itself is not absolutely original: for when I was at Derby in the Summer of 1774 I strolled by mere chance into a Bookseller's Shop, where however I could find nothing to tempt Curiosity but a strange Book about Corporal Bates, which I bought & read for want of better Sport, and found it to be the very Novel from which Sterne took his first Idea: the Character of Uncle Toby, the Behaviour of Coporal Trim, even the name of Tristram itself seems to be borrowed from this stupid History of Corporal Bates forsooth'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Dates of reading given in MS as being between June 22 1897 "Jubilee Day" and July 7 1897.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 31 May 1792: 'You understand music. As I am ignorant of the tune I beg you will practise "Lillabullero" to teach me. You see I have been reading Tristram Shandy & I want that whistle as bad as ever Toby did. Watsons Chemical Essay are [sic] my present study & I hope to practice a little chemistry at Oxford when I get there.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
[between journal entries for 10 October and 19 November 1880]
'The evening readings of Tristram Shandy created in Lady Charlotte a feeling of disgust, and she thought it sad that a man who could write so finely should have so perverted his talents, though she recognized the number of beautiful passages.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles and Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
19 November 1880, from Paris:
'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'Steady downpour all day long. Weather is worse than we get in England. No wonder Uncle Toby in [italics] Tristram Shandy [end italics] said "our armies swore terribly in Flanders". They had the same sort of weather and probably less comfort.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert John Martin Print: Book
(1) 'I have read today ... some 10 pages of "Tristram Shandy" and am wondering whether I
like it. It is certainly the maddest book ever written.... It gives you the impression of an
escaped lunatic's conversation while chasing his hat on a windy May morning. Yet there are
beautiful serious parts in it though of a sentimental kind, as I know from my father. Have you
ever come across it?' (2) 'I was interested to hear that you liked Tristram Shandy....
Personally I have tried in vain to see the good points of it. The absolute disconnection or
scrappiness, the abundant coarseness of an utterly vulgar, non-voluptuous sort and the
general smoking-room atmosphere of the book were too much for me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
