Gwen Raverat (1885-1957) was an English wood-engraver, and developed a distinctive painterly style influenced by the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. Many of her prints were made as illustrations to books. This is one of a series of wood engravings illustrating scenes from Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). The image relates to the novel's final chapter, entitled The Case of Delicacy. Parson Yorick is obliged to share his hotel room with a lady and her maid, so they meet to draw up a set of house rules:

"We sat down to supper; and had we not had more generous wine to it than a little inn in Savoy could have furnished, our tongues would have been tied up, till necessity herself had set them at liberty - but the lady having a few bottles of Burgundy in her voiture sent down her fille de chambre for a couple of them..."

Raverat's original wood engravings were created in 1937. Modified versions were included in a Penguin Books paperback edition of the novel published the following year, but the illustrations were printed from stereotypes and lacked definition. In 1941 Thomas Nelson published a hardback edition, printing the images from the original wood blocks and capturing more of the detail as a result.