Augustan prose other novelists should be mentioned, for they, like Fielding and Richardson, were in dialog through their works. Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett held a personal dislike for one another, and their works similarly offered up oppositional views of the self in society and the method of the novel. Laurence Sterne was a clergyman, and he consciously set out to imitate Jonathan Swift with his "Tristram Shandy" (1759–1767). "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman" was a stylistic and formal revolution for the novel. Like Swift's satires, it begins with radical skepticism and a willingness to break apart figurative language
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman of the actors to play themselves. In February 2014, a theatrical adaptation by Callum Hale was presented at the Tabard Theatre in Chiswick. "Tristram Shandy" has been translated into many languages, including German (repeatedly, beginning in 1769), Dutch (repeatedly, by Munnikhuisen, 1779; Lindo, 1852 and Jan & Gertrude Starink, 1990), French (repeatedly, beginning in 1785; by Guy Jouvet, 2004), Russian (repeatedly, beginning 1804-1807; by Adrian Antonovich Frankovsky, 1949), Hungarian (by Győző Határ, 1956), Italian (by Antonio Meo, 1958), Czech (by Aloys Skoumal, 1963), Spanish (by José Antonio López de Letona, 1975; Ana María Aznar, 1976 and Javier Marías, 1978), Portuguese