Portal:Literature/Selected picture archive/May 2009

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was a ground-breaking English comic novel. Told in a stream-of-consciousness narrative style, the novel weaves its way through the lives of many characters and their singular adventures - finally getting to Tristram's birth in the third volume of nine - in sitcom-like domestic upsets and problems.

In this illlustration by George Cruikshank, we see two of the major characters, Trim (left), and Uncle Toby. Toby's hobby-horse, the novel's term for a particular obsession, is the military, and in this scene, he gets himself and Trim so excited by his discussion of military matters that they begin acting them out.