The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman in permanent additions to the English lexicon; within the text of "Tristram Shandy" Sterne describes the novel as "Shandean," coining a term which still carries the meaning that Sterne originally attached to it when he wrote, "I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good humoured "Shandean" book..." Strongly influenced by Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" also gave rise to the term "cervantic," (which Sterne at the time spelled "cervantick"). In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Ignatius Sancho wrote to Laurence Sterne encouraging the writer to use his pen to lobby for the abolition
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy travels in Europe, and strongly objected to his spleen, acerbity and quarrelsomeness. He modeled the character of Smelfungus on him. The novel was extremely popular and influential and helped establish travel writing as the dominant genre of the second half of the 18th century. Unlike prior travel accounts which stressed classical learning and objective non-personal points of view, "A Sentimental Journey" emphasized the subjective discussions of personal taste and sentiments, of manners and morals over classical learning. Throughout the 1770s female travel writers began publishing significant numbers of sentimental travel accounts. Sentiment also became a favorite style among those expressing