First published in 1759, Laurence Sterne’s ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy’ is widely considered a revolutionary novel, and its style is marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices.

In ‘Alas, artist Sophie Nys obsesses about one of these devices, the so-called black page, famously paired with the line, “Alas, poor Yorick!” She compiles a remarkable collection of black pages, all gathered from more than 100 different editions of Sterne’s book.

Included is a text by Peter de Voogd, the collector and owner of the library from which all the images in this publication originate, on the technical challenges that printing a black page presented for these early editions.

Laurence Sterne的《The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy》首次出版于1759年，被广泛认为是一部革命性的小说，其风格以离题、一语双关和图形装置为特点。

在”唉，艺术家Sophie Nys痴迷于这些手段之一，即所谓的黑页，与 “唉，可怜的约里克！”这句话相配是很有名的。她收集了大量的黑页，全部来自斯特恩的100多个不同版本的书。

其中包括收藏家和图书馆馆主Peter de Voogd的一篇文章，本出版物中的所有图片都来自该图书馆，他介绍了印刷黑页对这些早期版本的技术挑战。