Rich in playful double entendres, digressions, formal oddities, and typographical experiments, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 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 fasci- nates like a verbal game of chess, Tristram Shandy is the most protean and playful English fiction of the eighteenth century and a celebration of the art; its inventiveness anticipates the work of Joyce, Rushdie, and Fuentes. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the nine- volume first edition.