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    A Sentimental Journey
    A Sentimental Journey
    A Sentimental Journey
    Audiobook4 hours

    A Sentimental Journey

    Written by Laurence Sterne

    Narrated by Anton Lesser

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Published just months before his death in 1768, A Sentimental Journey is Sterne’s lightly fictionalised account of his own European travels; and being Sterne, it is more about digressions, misunderstandings and risqué jokes than the places he visits. Narrated by the (apparently) innocent Parson Yorick, who appeared in Sterne’s other masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, it is full of anecdote and incident, and is far more about the people than the landscapes on the road from Calais. Despite the title, any sentimentality is offset by the elegance of the writing, the engaging companionship of Yorick himself and the constant, playful surprises.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateNov 1, 2010
    ISBN9781843793823
    Author

    Laurence Sterne

    Irish-born Laurence Sterne was an eighteenth century English author and Anglican clergyman. Though he is perhaps best known as a novelist, Sterne also wrote memoirs, articles on local politics, and a large number of sermons for which he was quite well known during his lifetime. Sterne’s works include The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, and the satire A Political Romance (also known as The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat). Sterne died in 1768 at the age of 54.

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    Reviews for A Sentimental Journey

    3.5/5

    20 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Sterne wanders around talking to swindlers and fops and very nice peasant folk, and keeps getting terribly attracted to women who he tells us of COURSE he did nothing with! A nice bit o' life-loving fluff from the guy who brought us Tristram Shandy. Too bad he didn't get to get into it further before he died.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Superb production!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      As I mentioned before about Laurence Sterne, after I have read his books I wish I could write like him!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Another great example of why you need to really think about what a book's trying to do before you judge it. This is nice and subtle- on the one hand, it tugs the heart-strings unashamedly; on the other hand, it makes ruthless fun of you for having your heart-string tugged. Great stuff- unless you're expecting well rounded three dimensional characters and believable plot turns and a coherent narrative and so on. Not here, friendo. Here you get intriguing reflections on the general goodness/evilness of humankind, and jokes at the expense of people who think you can make general reflections on morality in that way. I wish he'd been able to add a couple of volumes to it; the whole enterprise is so clever and so much less brow-beating than Tristram Shandy that it might've ended up being one of the best books I'd read. As is, it's pretty darn-tootin good.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Sometimes, you read a book that is widely acclaimed as a classic, a masterpiece, a part of the literary canon, and your reaction is "Eh", or possibly "Meh". That's my reaction to "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy", which was a hit after it was published in 1768, and has been finding readers for almost 250 years. When something like this happens, I assume that the problem isn't with the novel, it's with me. I couldn't get involved in the book, but that may be because I depend too much on narrative tension, and not enough on just being there. Also, I couldn't figure out what was going on at times: again, I may be too literal. For those who like this sort of thing, this is clearly the sort of thing they like. Hats off to them: I am not up to it.
    • 3/5
      Well written. Good story. But only part not all of book is present as sterne died before it could be finished. Worth a read especially following Tristram shandy. Some political satire and risqué humour.
    • 2/5
      Within the genre of travelogues, two approaches can be distinguished. There are those authors who describe fore-mostly the places, and the habits of the people they visit, from an anthropological point of view, and there are those who describe the people they meet on their travels from a more humanistic point of view, as equals, so to speak. An example of the first type of travelogue would be Daniel Defoe's A tour through the whole island of Great Britain, which was published in 1724. Laurence Sterne's fictional A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy was published a few decades later in 1768. By this time, travel to the continent had become fashionable.In Sterne's A sentimental journey, his alter ego Yorick, which contemporary readers would know as a clergyman, travels to Paris, supposedly on his way to Italy. However, the story develops very slowly, and for the larger part the story is set in the environs of Paris, indicated but scantily.If the book is humourous or witty, it is not clear in which way. Supposedly, various sketches or situation would be humourous to contemporaries of Sterne but the humour is lost on contemporary readers. In fact, A sentimental journey seems a rather boring little book, and all pleasure to be had from it can only be found by studying the introduction carefully which explains where to look for it. Even then, the notes in the annotated Penguin edition merely clarified what should already be clear to the educated reader, while leaving many possible clues unexplained.
    • 3/5
      A serialized "Tristam Shandy" made the rural vicar "passing rich" and the talk of London. He balanced these with The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, a title apparently drawn from the "fellow of infinite jest". In 1762-64 and 1765-66, Sterne traveled through France and Italy. We find here the pretty observations and naif adages of a man who understood that the real criminals in our society are the bores. One of the favorite apothegmas of everyone except a good many people, is: "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb". I know, you thought it was Biblical....
    • 5/5
      The review refers to this edition:The Carlton Classics, 152pp, London : John Long Ltd., 1923A came across this little book by chance, an unassuming small 8vo hardback but carefully made, even a ribbon-marker sewed in, the smooth green and fairly ugly buckram brightened up by the publisher’s emblem in gold on the front that shows a snake curled around the letters J L and what presumably is an image of the tree of knowledge, holding a goblet in its mouth, tempting you, the reader, to drink from it.The edition is edited with a Biographical Introduction by Hannaford Bennett and been given an Index. This the editor must have added as none of the earlier editions I consulted include it; curiously, it lists only the Chapter headings and these in alphabetical order. Did Mr. Hannaford Bennett want to amuse himself and edit the edition in the playful spirit of Sterne? But an error: - the location for the chapter ‘The Riddle’ is given as Calais, it should be Paris - is repeated in the Index. His oversight? And at the end of ‘The Rose – Paris’, what reads in the 2nd edition of 1768: ‘Rien que pisser’ and two lines further on: ‘to let Madame de Rambouliet p...ss on.’, is given out of pudency as: ‘Rien que …’, and: ‘to let Madame Rambouliet …;’. This 2nd edition of 1768 (Vol. I, London: Becket & De Hondt) lists alphabetically the subscribers, 281 names in all, some with multiple subscriptions e.g. 20 sets to Mr. Crew, 5 sets to Mr. Ogilby etc., so perhaps 400 sets altogether. The first 2 volumes of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy of what was planned to be a 4 volume work were published shortly before Sterne’s death in 1768. So it remains unfinished and the protagonist, Yorick, Sterne’s alter ego, never reaches Italy. It is one of the first travel books but quite unlike any that follows (but then, after all, Sterne wrote it). Yorick, after listing all classes of travellers, calls himself a ‘Sentimental Traveller’. What he means by this he explains in his own words:"It is for this reason, Monsieur le Comte, continued I, that I have not seen the Palais Royal nor the Luxembourg, - nor the Façade of the Louvre, - nor have attempted to swell the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches. I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings, and loose sketches, hung up in it, than the transfiguration of Raphael itself.The thirst of this, continued I, as impatient as that which inflames the breast of the connoisseur, has led me from my own home into France, and from France will lead me through Italy ;-‘tis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of Nature, and those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each other, - and the world, better than we do."So it is his encounters, not with famous landmarks, but with men and women, Yorick talks about, foremost with women, because each one stirs his heart. Sterne’s unique prose cannot be read in haste, it demands time and leisure and the taste of each sentence. What I like best is a hint shining through of Yorick/Sterne laughing about himself. I will re-read Tristram Shandy. (VI-VII-10)
    • 3/5
      A Sentimental Journey is the story of a man traveling from England to France and back and his adventures, or should I say, his encounters during the trip. We don't get a lot of "travel" descriptions, but rather descriptions of the carriages he takes, how he hires them, his servant, and the ladies he meets and endeavors to get to know better on the journey. It is 'sentimental' in the sense of a journal of his sentiments towards the women, the servants, the places he goes. Fairly short.
    • 2/5
      This is the tale of a monk, Yorick, who embarks on a journey across the English Channel to Calais and on to Paris. He then sets out through France towards Italy, meeting a variety of characters and getting into tricky situations along the way, and that is as far as the story gets. Unfortunately the author, Laurence Sterne, succumbs to consumption before he has finished his book.The book was first published in 1768 so pre-dates the golden age of classic literature. The language is hard to grasp to begin with although the story begins to flow better as the book goes on. The book has some humour in it and is one of the earliest forms of travel writing by the leisurely tourist - perhaps Sterne was the Bill Bryson of his day.I can't say I enjoyed this book. I can see that it stands as an early example of travel writing and is of interest to anyone who enjoyed Sterne's other work, principally Tristram Shandy (which I haven't read) but, for me, it didn't stand up as a novel to be read for pleasure. It ends so abruptly that I wondered what the point was of reading it at all. I was looking forward to an insight into 18th century France and Italy and I didn't really get that.