PHIn 1760, Laurence Sterne published The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, one of literature's strangest early novels.
Sterne constantly experimented with what a printed book could do.
The novel contains a completely black page mourning a character's death and a marbled page unique to the book.
But one particularly unusual moment involves a blank page.
Sterne asks readers to imagine and draw their own portrait of the character Widow Wadman there.
Instead of describing everything himself, he deliberately handed part of the creative process to the reader.
More than 250 years before interactive storytelling became fashionable, a novelist was already playing with the boundary between author and audience.
© The British Library
Sterne constantly experimented with what a printed book could do.
The novel contains a completely black page mourning a character's death and a marbled page unique to the book.
But one particularly unusual moment involves a blank page.
Sterne asks readers to imagine and draw their own portrait of the character Widow Wadman there.
Instead of describing everything himself, he deliberately handed part of the creative process to the reader.
More than 250 years before interactive storytelling became fashionable, a novelist was already playing with the boundary between author and audience.
© The British Library