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
Laurence Sterne He was involved in, and wrote about, local politics in 1742. His major publication prior to "Tristram Shandy" was the satire "A Political Romance" (1759), aimed at conflicts of interest within York Minster. A posthumously published piece on the art of preaching, "A Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais", appears to have been written in 1759. Rabelais was by far Sterne's favourite author, and in his correspondence he made clear that he considered himself as Rabelais' successor in humour writing, distancing himself from Jonathan Swift: I ... deny I have gone as far as Swift: he keeps a due distance