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A Sentimental Journey and Other Writings
Yorick, Sterne's Englishman abroad, is blithely unconcerned by famous views or monuments. Bumping along in his coach, the amiable parson buttonholes us with tales of his encounters with all manner of men and women - particularly the attractive ones. And, as drama piles upon drama, anecdote, flirtation and digression, his destination takes second place to an exhilarating voyage of emotional discovery. Interweaving sharp wit with gaiety, irony with sentiment, Sterne creates a deliberately artless novel which calls to mind the modernism of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. In A Sentimental Journey, Woolf declared, 'we are as close to life as we can be'.
213 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1768
25 people are currently reading
334 people want to read
About the author
Laurence Sterne
1,528 books400 followersLaurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Sterne died in London after years of fighting consumption (tuberculosis).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence...
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence...
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 17, 2017
What exactly is sentimental fiction? In A Sentimental Journey, Sterne’s narrator, a semi-biographical character named Yorick, undertakes a journey from London to Lyons. Yet travel literature this ain’t. Yorick doesn’t marvel at landmarks, nor does he partake in any other activities normal to tourists. Instead, he alternates, mainly, between thinking about women and crying ‘sentimental’ tears—on certain occasions, doing both at once.
If you aren’t by now positively itching to read this novel, you must realize that Sterne, all things considered, is the quite remarkable prose stylist. Journey is a bewildering cascade of double entendres and poetic self-reflections, topped off with with a liberal use of dashes.
For a taste, here’s the novel’s opening:
Echoes, perhaps indirect, of his stream-of-consciousness style can be felt in writers as divers as Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys. Plus, Schopenhauer, Marx and Goethe all thought Sterne was the man, so there you go. For the casual reader, however, it would perhaps be best stick with his earlier – and better known – work, Tristram Shandy.
The Oxford Classics edition includes The Journal to Eliza, A Political Romance and a selection from The Sermons of Mr Yorick. The Journal is incredibly depressing; A Romance, being Sterne's first published work, holds a certain significance – although the specificity of its subject matter make it somewhat inaccessible; and the sermons, by and large, are rather dull.
If you aren’t by now positively itching to read this novel, you must realize that Sterne, all things considered, is the quite remarkable prose stylist. Journey is a bewildering cascade of double entendres and poetic self-reflections, topped off with with a liberal use of dashes.
For a taste, here’s the novel’s opening:
—They order, said I, this matter better in France–
–You have been in France? said my gentlemen, turning quick upon me with the most civil triumph in the world.–Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with myself, That one and twenty miles sailing, for ‘tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights–I’ll look into them: so giving up the argument–I went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches–‘the coat I have on, said I, looking at the sleeve, will do’–took a place in the Dover stage; and the packet sailing at nine the next morning–by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricassee’d chicken so incontestably in France, that had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects of the Droits d’aubaine…
Echoes, perhaps indirect, of his stream-of-consciousness style can be felt in writers as divers as Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys. Plus, Schopenhauer, Marx and Goethe all thought Sterne was the man, so there you go. For the casual reader, however, it would perhaps be best stick with his earlier – and better known – work, Tristram Shandy.
The Oxford Classics edition includes The Journal to Eliza, A Political Romance and a selection from The Sermons of Mr Yorick. The Journal is incredibly depressing; A Romance, being Sterne's first published work, holds a certain significance – although the specificity of its subject matter make it somewhat inaccessible; and the sermons, by and large, are rather dull.
December 9, 2021
deze was echt pure crack maar dan op de - saaie idk wtf er aan de hand is want ik begrijp niets en ben aan het zonen terwijl de audioboek opname op youtube aan snelheid x2 aan het spelen is - manier
September 2, 2011
The first writing in the book was incomplete novel (though I think it's partly autobiographical), A Sentimental Journey, which is Sterne's best known work. (I picked this up, because in the 1999 version of Mansfeild Park, Henry Crawford reads a paragraph from the book out loud to Fanny Price.) The story covers a traveler's journeys through France, in which he meets and interacts with a number of characters, including a mild-tempered monk, a French servant, a wealthy aristocrat, and numerous women of all ages and level of beauty with whom he has varying degrees of amorous feelings for. (A subsequent volume was meant to follow up with the traveler's journeys in Italy as well, but is unwritten.)
The style of writing doesn't carry over well to the modern day. It's filled with strange grammar rules and blocks of text that I had to read multiple times in order to decipher the meaning (a challenge throughout the book), and often it's hard to tell who is talking and when. It made for very slow, very dry reading, for though the book is meant to be humorous, much of the humor was lost on me.
A Sentimental Journey has it's pluses and some of the narrator's adventures are entertaining (I still love the scene with the caged bird), but it's far too challenging for recreational reading (IMO).
Next came The Journal to Eliza, which is also partly autobiographical, partly fictional. The journal is in sense a long extended letter over many weak to Eliza (the author was in love with someone named Elizabeth Draper), in which the narrator bemoans and whines about his loneliness now that his Eliza has been whisked away by her husband to India, and woe is him because he's so damn lovesick. I think it's pretty clear that this piece was not to my taste. I don't have have much patience for that sort of lovesick whinny. I just don't.
A Political Romance was my favorite writing. It involves the story of a con-man who keeps trying to claim rights to a pair of breeches and a watch-coat. I found the writing easier to read in this piece, and while, I didn't understand the politics involved, the story was rather funny regardless.
A Political Romance also includes a section in which a group of gentlemen find the slip of paper that contained the story of the breeches and the watch-coat. After reading it, they sit around a table drinking and belabor its meaning, coming up with several possible and outlandish interpretations of the story. This was also quite funny.
The final writing in the book were a selection of Sermons by Sterne. I read them through, but didn't spend much time on them, as they didn't really interest me.
The style of writing doesn't carry over well to the modern day. It's filled with strange grammar rules and blocks of text that I had to read multiple times in order to decipher the meaning (a challenge throughout the book), and often it's hard to tell who is talking and when. It made for very slow, very dry reading, for though the book is meant to be humorous, much of the humor was lost on me.
A Sentimental Journey has it's pluses and some of the narrator's adventures are entertaining (I still love the scene with the caged bird), but it's far too challenging for recreational reading (IMO).
Next came The Journal to Eliza, which is also partly autobiographical, partly fictional. The journal is in sense a long extended letter over many weak to Eliza (the author was in love with someone named Elizabeth Draper), in which the narrator bemoans and whines about his loneliness now that his Eliza has been whisked away by her husband to India, and woe is him because he's so damn lovesick. I think it's pretty clear that this piece was not to my taste. I don't have have much patience for that sort of lovesick whinny. I just don't.
A Political Romance was my favorite writing. It involves the story of a con-man who keeps trying to claim rights to a pair of breeches and a watch-coat. I found the writing easier to read in this piece, and while, I didn't understand the politics involved, the story was rather funny regardless.
A Political Romance also includes a section in which a group of gentlemen find the slip of paper that contained the story of the breeches and the watch-coat. After reading it, they sit around a table drinking and belabor its meaning, coming up with several possible and outlandish interpretations of the story. This was also quite funny.
The final writing in the book were a selection of Sermons by Sterne. I read them through, but didn't spend much time on them, as they didn't really interest me.
June 18, 2019
There is something spectacular about Laurence Stern and how he takes the notion, no...the cult, of sensibility, the parade and carnival it had (has?) become, and then makes it into something some people continue to take seriously, but he wholeheartedly takes the mick with, for an entire movement, one, in my opinion, at least five centuries in the making. From the the medieval ages, depicting women's intelligence based on their swooning, beating of the breast, pulling out of the hair, looking on with utter heart shattering pity, and then doing absolutely nothing...there is one passage that has had a profound imprint/impact upon my viewpoint of literature of sensibility, and beyond.
It is hilarious:
The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and
thrusting his head through the trellis pressed his breast against it as
if impatient.—I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at
liberty.—“No,” said the starling,— “I can’t get out—I can’t get out,”
said the starling.
I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember
an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason
had been a bubble, were so suddenly call’d home. Mechanical as the notes
were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment
they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I
heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down
them.
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I,—still thou art a
bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink
of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.—’Tis thou, thrice sweet
and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or
in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till
Nature herself shall change.—No tint of words can spot thy snowy
mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron:—with thee to smile
upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch,
from whose court thou art exiled!—Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down
upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great
Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion,—and
shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon
those heads which are aching for them!
And then he leaves then he leaves the bird carrying on with his day. There are so many instances of absolute genius, including the innocent encounter of the purse.
Hahaha, thank you Mr. Stern.
It is hilarious:
The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and
thrusting his head through the trellis pressed his breast against it as
if impatient.—I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at
liberty.—“No,” said the starling,— “I can’t get out—I can’t get out,”
said the starling.
I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember
an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason
had been a bubble, were so suddenly call’d home. Mechanical as the notes
were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment
they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I
heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down
them.
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I,—still thou art a
bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink
of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.—’Tis thou, thrice sweet
and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or
in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till
Nature herself shall change.—No tint of words can spot thy snowy
mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron:—with thee to smile
upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch,
from whose court thou art exiled!—Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down
upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great
Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion,—and
shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon
those heads which are aching for them!
And then he leaves then he leaves the bird carrying on with his day. There are so many instances of absolute genius, including the innocent encounter of the purse.
Hahaha, thank you Mr. Stern.
February 22, 2019
The Oxford version of Sterne's writing is a good one to understand this 18th century English author. It combines his more famous "Sentimental Journey" with some of his lesser known works including "The Journey to Eliza", "A Political Romance" and a few of his sermons.
"A Sentimental Journey" covers the adventures of Sterne's alter-ego Yorick as he travels through France and Italy. There are various references to Don Quixote which was influential for Sterne. Yorick too has a sidekick, but that character unlike Quixote's Sancho Panza is forgettable and mostly inconsequential. Yorick's adventures are fairly mundane, with the primary intrigue being his interactions with various women he meets in his travels. In particular, Yorick is taken with a lady name Maria. Sterne leaves it to the reader's imagination if there is a consummation of Yorick and Maria's relationship.
"The Journey to Eliza" is a diary of a love-stricken man as he travels home on a ship. He has just met Eliza and has fallen madly in love with her. Day by day he pours out his heart to her in numerous letters. Besides being love sick, he is physically sick from the ocean voyage. Which is more debilitating is unclear. He is ready to cut all ties with his current wife and hopes that Eliza in turn will abandon her husband for him. The raw emotion and heart-on-his sleeve letters are extreme, especially considering that both parties are already married. This writing was inspired by Sterne's real-life infatuation with the then 22-year old Elizabeth Draper.
"A Political Romance" is a short farcical piece similar to the structure and theme of Pope's "The Rape of the Lock". Sterne pokes fun at various church leaders with this back-and-forth letter exchange over a seemingly trivial dispute regarding clothing. There is a deeper meaning to the argument, which Sterne points out in one of the letters. He uses the clothing metaphor in an interesting way to take issue with the pettiness of these so-called spiritual leaders.
The book wraps up with a few of Sterne's sermons. A recurring theme of Sterne's is his underlying optimism and exurberence towards life. He defends worldly pleasures including romance. He uses the story of Job to show that though humans are flawed and imperfect, they are crafted in the likeness of God including their sentimentality and love. He goes so far to show to argue that only through our connect to God can we truly experience joy and connection with others.
Each section is radically different than the other. The introduction points out that this was not such an uncommon phenomenon for the time. Famous writers prior to Sterne also wrote with various styles and different topics. Sterne's writing is difficult for the modern reader. Many of the references and outlooks for the time are lost over time. Sterne was a popular writer for his time, and his style and writing is impressive despite the disorientation caused by the contextual issues. The value that Sterne's book and Oxford's choice of his works is to show how his writing is relevant despite wildly different agendas and audiences. Even in his sermons, his sentimentality and emotional approach towards towards life, relations, and religion is evident and quite intriguing.
"A Sentimental Journey" covers the adventures of Sterne's alter-ego Yorick as he travels through France and Italy. There are various references to Don Quixote which was influential for Sterne. Yorick too has a sidekick, but that character unlike Quixote's Sancho Panza is forgettable and mostly inconsequential. Yorick's adventures are fairly mundane, with the primary intrigue being his interactions with various women he meets in his travels. In particular, Yorick is taken with a lady name Maria. Sterne leaves it to the reader's imagination if there is a consummation of Yorick and Maria's relationship.
"The Journey to Eliza" is a diary of a love-stricken man as he travels home on a ship. He has just met Eliza and has fallen madly in love with her. Day by day he pours out his heart to her in numerous letters. Besides being love sick, he is physically sick from the ocean voyage. Which is more debilitating is unclear. He is ready to cut all ties with his current wife and hopes that Eliza in turn will abandon her husband for him. The raw emotion and heart-on-his sleeve letters are extreme, especially considering that both parties are already married. This writing was inspired by Sterne's real-life infatuation with the then 22-year old Elizabeth Draper.
"A Political Romance" is a short farcical piece similar to the structure and theme of Pope's "The Rape of the Lock". Sterne pokes fun at various church leaders with this back-and-forth letter exchange over a seemingly trivial dispute regarding clothing. There is a deeper meaning to the argument, which Sterne points out in one of the letters. He uses the clothing metaphor in an interesting way to take issue with the pettiness of these so-called spiritual leaders.
The book wraps up with a few of Sterne's sermons. A recurring theme of Sterne's is his underlying optimism and exurberence towards life. He defends worldly pleasures including romance. He uses the story of Job to show that though humans are flawed and imperfect, they are crafted in the likeness of God including their sentimentality and love. He goes so far to show to argue that only through our connect to God can we truly experience joy and connection with others.
Each section is radically different than the other. The introduction points out that this was not such an uncommon phenomenon for the time. Famous writers prior to Sterne also wrote with various styles and different topics. Sterne's writing is difficult for the modern reader. Many of the references and outlooks for the time are lost over time. Sterne was a popular writer for his time, and his style and writing is impressive despite the disorientation caused by the contextual issues. The value that Sterne's book and Oxford's choice of his works is to show how his writing is relevant despite wildly different agendas and audiences. Even in his sermons, his sentimentality and emotional approach towards towards life, relations, and religion is evident and quite intriguing.
September 29, 2020
*1.5 stars*
Only read 'A Sentimental Journey' out of the writings.
This text was very hard to immerse myself in, as I found the writing style, with the excessive use of dashes, extremely disorienting and confusing. I was mostly bored, and only forced myself to finish due to it being required reading for my class. I also disliked the representation of women within this text, as needing to be saved from sorrow by a man who supposedly knows better.
Only read 'A Sentimental Journey' out of the writings.
This text was very hard to immerse myself in, as I found the writing style, with the excessive use of dashes, extremely disorienting and confusing. I was mostly bored, and only forced myself to finish due to it being required reading for my class. I also disliked the representation of women within this text, as needing to be saved from sorrow by a man who supposedly knows better.
September 20, 2025
Relied very heavily on this edition for my Wikipedia articles. Introduction very usefully 'states the obvious' for a range of general observations that belong in there. I do also find the novel itself quite charming -- Sterne's bawdiness is more endearing when it's good-spirited. I think on the whole he IS making fun of sentimentality, but in a fond and self-deprecating way.
November 27, 2017
Wow... written in the 18th century but reads like it was written now. Almost stream of consciousness like at some points-- very cool!!
March 18, 2017
It was slow at first, and didn't catch my interest. But as soon as it was getting interesting, it abruptly ended. I'm the end,I enjoyed A Sentimental Journey.
April 26, 2015
I like the playful inventiveness of this book. For example (very slight spoiler), the hero finds part of a fascinating old love story in a piece of old wrapping paper - he shares it with us - it ends on a cliffhanger - he asks his servant what he has done with the rest of it, and then finds he has wrapped up a bouquet in it to give to a girl who caught his fancy! So here we have a love story within a love story which is terminated on a cliffhanger by another love story...which doesn't go anywhere. This kind of thing can get irritating when it is prolonged to shaggy dog story extremities, but this is a short book, and I quite like this kind of thing.
It's not froth, either, despite the lightness of touch. What are we to make of an Anglican clergyman who announces his concern with true feeling and right behaviour, larding his writing with biblical references, and yet is unabashed about pursuing more or less any pretty woman who catches his eye? Is he a shallow hypocrite, or is he trying to integrate human desire within the moral framework, or is he just trying to reconcile the irreconcileable? This book left me with much to think about, even though there were times when it became a bit boring and discursive, even for me.
It's not froth, either, despite the lightness of touch. What are we to make of an Anglican clergyman who announces his concern with true feeling and right behaviour, larding his writing with biblical references, and yet is unabashed about pursuing more or less any pretty woman who catches his eye? Is he a shallow hypocrite, or is he trying to integrate human desire within the moral framework, or is he just trying to reconcile the irreconcileable? This book left me with much to think about, even though there were times when it became a bit boring and discursive, even for me.
October 20, 2010
A smart and joyful tale that deserves, I confess, better than the cursory reading I've been able to give it (oh, the casualties of graduate school). Though it is a travel narrative, it could be set just about anywhere; Sterne's point -- one of them, anyway -- is that the joy of travel is not the seeing of sights but the developing of relationships with new and different (but ultimately the same) people. Of course, it helps if those people want to sleep with you. I've intended to read Sterne's Tristram Shandy for some time now, and I suppose once I've done that I'll want to return here. Recommended.
February 25, 2013
I did not like this book. I am not fond of stream of consciousness writing, and I am certainly not a fan of endless endnotes relating all of the text to another work by the author I have not read.
The idea that it is all based on interactions with people is intriguing- its not the opera he sees but the men in the crowd... but not worth it, overall.
The idea that it is all based on interactions with people is intriguing- its not the opera he sees but the men in the crowd... but not worth it, overall.
November 19, 2013
When I first opened the book the first page was appealing but as the novel goes on I got lost in the stream of consciousness of Yorick. What really annoyed me was the writing... Sometimes you don't know if it's the beginning of the dialogue or just another digression... I would not recommend it for a daily entertaining book.
October 19, 2014
This was probably the dumbest book I have ever read in my life. It literally had no meaning at all. Whoever said that you always learn something from a book is obviously a liar because this book actually made me somehow stupid for reading it. Oh wait, I'm sorry, I actually did learn something from this book. I learned that this author is trash and that I should never read a book by him again.
October 8, 2019
Not going to lie, reading this extremely short novel was a struggle. I enjoyed and was engaged in some of the passages but I struggled to follow others.
And to add insult to injury Sterne died just as the novel was getting good!
And to add insult to injury Sterne died just as the novel was getting good!
January 17, 2021
Only had to read a 'Sentimental Journey', not the other writings (yet).
A really funny, (yes, you guessed it) sentimental and entertaining journey. I really "did care a sous" about this book. Might read Tristam Shandy one day, who knows ...
A really funny, (yes, you guessed it) sentimental and entertaining journey. I really "did care a sous" about this book. Might read Tristam Shandy one day, who knows ...
May 7, 2022
im sorry but this just has to be sterne trolling. theres no way that he sincerely wrote a chapter about measuring the heights of people in paris and feeling melancholy about how many "dwarves" there are in france.
October 7, 2007
Weird from beginning to end, but definately brilliant! Sterne was ahead of his time for sure.
October 29, 2014
Overly sentimental in some places, but then it is a sentimental novel...
Read
February 24, 2015Sentimentalism is a horrid genre which I actually lived in AP English because it was so ridiculous and this is one of the 'best' examples of it
October 6, 2016
Only read the main book not the extra stuff.
February 11, 2023
1.5 meh
A plotless classic that flits and flops. Not a win for me.
A plotless classic that flits and flops. Not a win for me.
October 22, 2012
Only had to read A Sentimental Journey. Not my favorite.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews