Augustan literature the theme of fallen women in "" (1724). Thematically, Defoe's works are consistently Puritan. They all involve a fall, a degradation of the spirit, a conversion, and an ecstatic elevation. This religious structure necessarily involved a "bildungsroman", for each character had to learn a lesson about him or herself and emerge the wiser. The sentimental novel, or "novel of sentiment", developed after 1740, and among the most famous examples in English are Samuel Richardson's "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded" (1740), Oliver Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" (1766), Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (1759–67), "Sentimental Journey" (1768), Henry Brooke's "The Fool of Quality" (1765–70),
Laurence Sterne a resurgence of a much older, Renaissance tradition of "Learned Wit" – owing a debt to such influences as the Scriblerian approach. "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" is a less influential book, although it was better received by English critics of the day. The book has many stylistic parallels with "Tristram Shandy", and indeed, the narrator is one of the minor characters from the earlier novel. Although the story is more straightforward, "A Sentimental Journey" can be understood to be part of the same artistic project to which "Tristram Shandy" belongs. Two volumes of Sterne's "Sermons" were published