This intricate system of hyphens, dashes, and asterisks harkens back to the unpredictable and spontaneous style of Tristram Shandy. This innovative masterpiece by Laurence Sterne anticipated by nearly two centuries the work of such modern writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett. It is generally regarded as the progenitor of the 20th century novel. Sterne’s playful use of punctuation and fonts—as well as the narration made of series of digressions—defied definition and turned convention on its head, even while laying the very foundations of great modern writing.