USS Tristram Shandy (1864) USS Tristram Shandy (1864) USS "Tristram Shandy" (1864) was a 444-ton steamer and blockade runner captured by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. With her Parrott rifle installed, she was used by the Navy as a gunboat to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederate States of America to prevent the South from trading with other countries. "Tristram Shandy" took her name from the hero—and the shortened title—of the novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", which was written by Laurence Sterne between the years 1759 and 1767. She was a schooner-rigged, iron-hulled sidewheel steamer completed in
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