The book came out in nine volumes, the first two in York in 1759 after being turned down in London. O is for Obadiah, the Shandys' irrepressible servant.
The point at which many readers jump ship. In Book Four, Walter Shandy holds forth at length to his brother about Slawkenbergius's Latin treatise on noses. Said he could imagine an author amusing cronies with the idea of Tristram Shandy, the impossible book, but couldn't imagine anyone being mad enough to write it. If pressed to respond, he invariably whistles 'half a dozen bars of Lillabulero' Uncle Toby, the gentlest person in a noisy household, never argues. And: 'So long as a man rides his Hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?' Personal obsessions and rude life, he implies, will always get in the way.
Sterne is mocking the idea that human life can be given a coherent structure, a consistent plot and a clear narrative line.
The narrative is interrupted so often by disquisitions and digressive sermons, they become the main text. H is for Hobby horse, a central image of the book, as well as its defining idiom.
