The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman took fiction into unknown realms, combining an entirely new concept in form with an idiosyncratic type of sentimental comedy. The publication of the first two of nine volumes brought the clergyman, Laurence Sterne, instant celebrity, but the novel`s exuberant mixture of bawdry and virtuous feeling also provided considerable moral outrage, which the author relished. An amorphous mass of inconsequential incidents, musings, reminiscences and countless hilarious digressions into side issues of the vaguest tangential relevance, make up this engaging anti-novel which has no beginning, middle or end, and is dominated by the author`s vibrant personality which commands the reader`s active participation.