Romanticism Goethe and the young Walter Scott. Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work involved elements of fraud, as what they claimed was earlier literature that they had discovered or compiled was, in fact, entirely their own work. The Gothic novel, beginning with Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" (1764), was an important precursor of one strain of Romanticism, with a delight in horror and threat, and exotic picturesque settings, matched in Walpole's case by his role in the early revival of Gothic architecture. "Tristram Shandy", a novel by Laurence Sterne (1759–67) introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rational sentimental novel to the
Laurence Sterne a resurgence of a much older, Renaissance tradition of "Learned Wit" – owing a debt to such influences as the Scriblerian approach. "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" is a less influential book, although it was better received by English critics of the day. The book has many stylistic parallels with "Tristram Shandy", and indeed, the narrator is one of the minor characters from the earlier novel. Although the story is more straightforward, "A Sentimental Journey" can be understood to be part of the same artistic project to which "Tristram Shandy" belongs. Two volumes of Sterne's "Sermons" were published