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 fact that "the number of days in all time is no greater than the number of years". A historic site in Geneva, Ohio, called Shandy Hall, is part of the Western Reserve Historical Society. The home was named after the house described in "Tristram Shandy". The "Perry Mason" episode "The Case of the Bogus Books" involves a bookseller selling stolen copies of rare books, in particular a first edition of "Tristram Shandy". In Anthony Trollope's novel "Barchester Towers", the narrator speculates that the scheming clergyman, Mr Slope, is descended from Dr Slop in "Tristram Shandy" (the extra letter having been