4 h 36 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 4 h 36 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a journey reveals less about foreign places than about the motives you would rather hide?
In Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Yorick crosses to France with little interest in monuments. The English clergyman follows his feelings instead. At Calais, he refuses a Franciscan monk’s request for charity, then feels ashamed. His encounters turn travel into an intimate, comic examination of kindness and the pleasure of thinking well of yourself.
Yorick hires La Fleur, a cheerful French servant whose social ease contrasts with his own restless self-examination. Customs bring awkwardness and companionship; attraction complicates sympathy. In Paris, passport trouble raises the possibility of imprisonment, while a caged starling makes confinement painfully vivid. Short episodes and digressions keep the focus on people, feelings, and motives that resist easy judgment.
What you’ll discover
- An unreliable companion Follow Yorick’s confiding, evasive voice as he reveals more than he means to.
- Kindness under scrutiny Consider how a cold refusal exposes the uneasy bond between sympathy and vanity.
- La Fleur’s easy warmth Meet a cheerful servant whose comfort with strangers throws his employer’s doubts into relief.
- The sting of confinement Encounter a caged starling that makes the suffering of imprisonment suddenly close and personal.
- Comedy in small encounters Enjoy awkward customs and teasing humor where attraction, generosity, and self-interest meet.
Who will love it
Readers who love a witty, warm voice, who enjoy small human encounters more than grand sights, and who like travel writing that follows a smile, a kind word or a good joke.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Generosity can vanish in a moment
- An apology becomes a shared gesture
- Travel reflects the heart you bring
- Small attentions can speak of love
- Kindness notices more than practical worth
- Ordinary encounters teach a silent language
- A caged bird makes freedom real
- Feeling must answer for its motives
- Kindness takes shape through action
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A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
by Laurence Sterne · 1768
A clergyman named Yorick crosses to Calais without a passport and sets out to study the human heart.
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In short
What happens when a man crosses a narrow strip of sea, sits down to a fricasseed chicken in Calais, and realizes that if he died of indigestion that night, the King of France would inherit his shirts? That is how Laurence Sterne opens A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 40 min2 h 5 min fast, 3 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 38,000 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1768by Laurence Sterne
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A sudden decision and a swing of mood
The book begins with an argument in London and ends it with a ticket. Yorick says they order matters better in France, and a gentleman asks if he has been there. He packs six shirts and a pair of black silk breeches, takes the Dover coach, and by three the next afternoon he sits at dinner in Calais.
Over his Burgundy, Yorick remembers that French law would hand a dead foreigner's belongings to the king. He scolds the monarch, then drinks his health, then decides the Bourbons are a gentle family after all. By the end of the bottle he feels an inch taller and ready to be generous to everyone.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 15 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1768
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2 h 55 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-sentimental-journey-through-france-and-italy.
Sterne, L. (2026). A sentimental journey through France and Italy. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-sentimental-journey-through-france-and-italy (Original work published 1768)
Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-sentimental-journey-through-france-and-italy.
@book{sterne2026sentimental,
author = {Sterne, Laurence},
title = {A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-sentimental-journey-through-france-and-italy},
note = {First published 1768}
}
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What is A Sentimental Journey about?
It follows a clergyman named Yorick as he travels through France toward Italy. He meets monks, beggars, shopkeepers and nobles, and studies his own feelings as much as the places he sees.
Who is Yorick in A Sentimental Journey?
Yorick is the narrator, a witty English clergyman who calls himself the Sentimental Traveler. Sterne also used the name in Tristram Shandy, and the name itself comes from the jester skull in Hamlet.
What does sentimental mean in this book?
Here it means guided by feeling and sympathy rather than by cold reasoning. Yorick values tenderness toward strangers, though Sterne also teases him for sometimes enjoying his own emotions too much.
The author
Laurence Sterne
1713–1768 · Anglo-Irish novelist and clergyman
Laurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and clergyman whose Tristram Shandy delighted and scandalized eighteenth-century readers with its digressions, jokes, and typographical games — a novel centuries ahead of its time.
More by Laurence Sterne
See all their booksMore like this
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