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
Journal to Eliza 22 year old wife of an East India Company official and sister of Rawson Hart Boddam. Her husband had brought her over here to recuperate from illness. Given both parties were already married, the relationship was regarded as scandalous. The author adopts the pseudonym Parson Yorick, who previously appeared in his two best known novels, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" and "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy". In "Tristram Shandy" we are told that the parson is related to the famous, fictional jester Yorick whose skull is disinterred in Shakespeare’s "Hamlet:" "It has often come into