Full Description
The quintessential novel of sentiment, A Sentimental Journey masquerades as the fragmentary travel journal of Parson Yorick, a whimsical and amorous Englishman abroad. Accompanied through Paris and the provinces by his loyal French valet, Yorick enjoys a variety of sentimental and often comic encounters with a lively range of French characters. The novel is also punctuated by passages of self-conscious reflection on questions of personal and national identity, slavery and freedom, poverty and inequality.
Appendices include material on sensibility in philosophy and literature and on eighteenth-century travel writing, as well as excerpts from Sterne's other writings and examples of the novel's critical reception, imitation, and illustration.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Laurence Sterne: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
Appendix A: Sensibility—Philosophical Sources
From John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
From George Cheyne, The English Malady: or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds (1733)
From David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40)
From David Hartley, Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749)
From Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
Appendix B: Sensibility in Literature
"On Sympathy. By a Young Lady" (October 1752)
"Ode to Sensibility" (November 1763)
From Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759)
From Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1762)
From the Monthly Review (1765)
From Hannah More, "Sensibility: An Epistle to the Honourable Mrs Boscawen" (1782)
Appendix C: Sensibility and Social Reform
From John Doughty, Christian Sympathy (1752)
Correspondence between Sterne and Ignatius Sancho on Slavery (1766)
From Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1767)
From Hannah More, Slavery, a Poem (1788)
Appendix D: Sterne's Didacticism
From Sterne's Letters (1767)
"To Sir W" (27 September 1767)
From a Letter to Mrs William James (12 November 1767)
From a Letter to "the Earl of ——" (28 November 1767)
From Laurence Sterne, The Sermons of Mr. Yorick (1760)
Appendix E: Travel Writing
From Thomas Nugent, The Grand Tour (1749)
From Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy (1766)
From Letter V
From Letter VII
From Samuel Sharp, Letters from Italy (1766)
From Letter XI
From Letter XVII
From Letter XXXVIII
From Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1765)
From Chapter IV
From Chapter XLIV
From Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1767)
Appendix F: Contemporary Reviews and Evaluations (1767)
From the Critical Review (1768)
From the Monthly Review (1768)
"On the Death of Yorick," London Magazine (June 1768)
From Sentiments on the Death of the Sentimental Yorick (1768)
Appendix G: Imitations of A Sentimental Journey
From [Samuel Paterson], Another Traveller! (1768)
From the Review of Another Traveller!, Critical Review (1768)
From the Review (by Ralph Griffiths) of Another Traveller!, Monthly Review (1768)
From Yorick's Sentimental Journey Continued (1768 or 1769)
From Cornelius Cayley, A Tour through Holland, Flanders, and Part of France (1773)
From Continuation of Yorick's Sentimental Journey (1788)
Appendix H: A Sentimental Journey Anthologized and Illustrated
From The Beauties of Sterne (1782)
Illustrations from Early Editions of A Sentimental Journey
"The Snuff Box" (1794)
"Maria" (1794)
"Yorick and the Monk Exchanging Snuff Boxes" (1792)
"Yorick and the Starling" (1792)
"The Grace" (1795)
"I Could Not Sustain the Picture of Confinement which my Fancy Had Drawn" (1802)
"The Temptation" (1803)
"Maria" (1803)
"Poor Maria"—Wedgwood Medallion (c. 1785)
Appendix I: Some Later Critiques
From John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley (1772)
From Vicesimus Knox, Essays Moral and Literary (1782)
From William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes, Contrasted with Real Christianity (1797)
From Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808)
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