A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his travels from a sentimental point of view. The novel can be seen as an epilogue to the possibly unfinished work "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", and also as an answer to Tobias Smollett's decidedly unsentimental "Travels Through France and Italy". Sterne had met Smollett during his
USS Tristram Shandy (1864) 1864 at Greenock, Scotland. She was originally owned by Matthew Isaac Wilson, a Liverpool, England, merchant. The ship subsequently sailed for the Bahamas, whence she took part in British efforts to continue trade with Southern states during the American Civil War. On her first attempt to run the Federal blockade, "Tristram Shandy" outdistanced a Union pursuer by dumping cargo overboard to gain a few more knots of speed. After reaching Wilmington, North Carolina, she returned to Nassau, Bahamas, to pick up another cargo earmarked for the Confederate States of America. Successfully slipping through the blockade, she unloaded at Wilmington and