"The things themselves": Origins and originality in sterne's sermons.(Critical Essay) From: Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation | Date: March 22, 1999| Author: Fanning, Christopher | COPYRIGHT 1999 Texas Tech University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at anything. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,--I would tear it out of my book.

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1)

It is no surprise to see Tristram Shandy as something of an "original." It was certainly ...