Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy continues to be as widely read and admired as upon its first appearance. Deemed more accessible than Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and often assigned as a college text, A Sentimental Journey has received its share of critical attention, but—unlike Tristram Shandy—to date it has not been the subject of a dedicated anthology of critical essays. This volume fills that gap with fresh perspectives on Sterne’s novel that will appeal to students and critics alike. Together with an introduction that situates each essay within A Sentimental Journey’s reception history, and a tailpiece detailing the culmination of Sterne’s career and his death, this volume presents a cohesive approach to this significant text that is simultaneously grounded and revelatory.

Mr. Yorick, the sentimental traveller, refrains from the customary reflections on monuments and landscapes. Instead, he focuses on his sweet and affectionate emotions, experiencing them everywhere he goes and with every creature who crosses his path — from bursts of sympathy for a caged bird and an abused donkey, to bonhomie among peasants at dinner and flirtation with women of every social degree. Closer in spirit to a novel than a travelogue, Mr. Yorick's account of his wanderings satirizes conventional travel books, and his comic mishaps along the path to tender emotions are as much a critique of pure sentiment as they are an exploration of human sympathy. Unabridged republication of the classic 1768 edition.

'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. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

In annotated texts based on those of the acclaimed Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne, this edition features the two works Sterne produced in the final year of his illness-plagued life: the witty, bawdy, pathetic, and thoughtful A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy; and Continuation of the Bramine's Journal, Sterne's correspondence to a twenty-two-year-old married Englishwoman living in India ("a Diary," as he put it, "of the miserable feelings of a person separated from a Lady for whose Society he languish'd"). Together, these mutually illuminating works offer rich insight into their author's hopes, fears, loves, longings, and philosophy as he prepared to face death and judgment. Excerpts from related texts provide context for understanding the title works in relation to the earlier writings and life of this exuberant yet subtle genius of eighteenth-century English literature.