A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

This short, light-hearted travel narrative follows Yorick, a gentle and impulsive English clergyman, as he crosses to France and journeys on toward Italy. The book is less about sights than about encounters: a monk, a beggar, a shopkeeper, a lady glimpsed in passing. Yorick is quick to feel, quick to laugh, and not always honest about his own motives.

Sterne uses the trip to explore sympathy, vanity and the small kindnesses between strangers. The form is fragmentary and witty, in the spirit of Tristram Shandy but more compact. It gave the word sentimental much of its eighteenth century meaning and remains a charming, ironic portrait of a feeling traveller.