Introduction and Notes by Robert Folkenflik<br><br><br>Rich in playful double entendres, digressions, formal oddities, and typographical experiments, <i>The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman </i>provoked a literary sensation when it first appeared in England in a series of volumes from 1759 to 1767. An ingeniously structured novel (about writing a novel) that fascinates like a verbal game of chess, <i>Tristram Shandy </i>is the most protean and playful English novel of the eighteenth century and a celebration of the art of fiction; its inventiveness anticipates the work of Joyce, Rushdie, and Fuentes in our own century. This Modern Library Paperback is set from the nine-volume first edition from 1759.