The fashion for eccentric travel writing inspired by Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy lasted a century, challenging the narrative structure and print features of traditional travel writing with paratextual extravagances designed to complicate the book's place within the burgeoning industrial publishing paradigm, enabling authors to maintain a deliberate stance of marginality within the field of professional authorship. The book, based on extensive library research, presents three case studies of Sterne, Xavier de Maistre and Rodolphe Töpffer. Its innovative approach sheds light on the study of literary eccentricity by combining narratology and book history.