So far all the books we have seen have been serious in intent, and that is a fair reflection of the library. Now for something completely different Tristram Shandy is a comic novel. Sterne was a country parson but discovered he had the ability to write comic satire. Tristram Shandy is in nine volumes and stretched from 1759 to 1767. In the Charlecote edition they have been compressed into four volumes. They were enthusiastically received although there were complaints about bawdiness and indecency in the frank treatment of sexual themes. The reason he needed nine volumes was that he was extremely discursive, wandering down many adventitious shoots rather than concentrating on the main stem. Indeed it takes until volume three for him even to be born. Shandy means half-crazy Tristram himself says he is writing a "civil, nonsensical, good-humoured Shandean book".