A fellow Sterne fan! Also, Mike Lesk, who wrote uucp at Bell Labs, is a committed Tristram Shandy aficionado with a first edition. The funereal page is great. Back in the 80s Mike talked about font emulating for old letterpress and how one could introduce pleasing asymmetries into the output.

Is there also a printed in "damn the cat ran over my page" moment?

McDowell & Sterne booksellers in York were I believe descendants/related. As was a lecturer of English at York University.

For those like me who didn't know the reference, see [1] Aaron Schuster, "Bachelors, Snakes, and Squiggles: The brief history of a famous literary doodle" (2009). Not only is the squiggle part of [2] _Tristram Shandy_ (1759), it — the squiggle — was also quoted by Balzac as the epigraph to [3] his novel _The Wild Ass's Skin_ (1832). Wikipedia [4] says: "Balzac never explained his purpose behind the use of the symbol, and its significance to _La Peau de chagrin_ is the subject of debate."

[1] https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/36/schuster.php

[2] https://archive.org/details/lifeopinionsoft00ster/page/554/

[3] https://archive.org/details/tudesphilosoph01balz/page/n12

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Peau_de_chagrin

Tristram Shandy is not a eloquent testament to the limitation of words. It's an eloquent testament how to evade censorship of words. Eg. every occurrence of the word sword can be replaced by penis, and you have a much bigger story.