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),
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman added for the sake of appearances). Slope is also called "Obadiah", a reference to another character in Sterne's novel. Russian writer Alexander Zhitinsky made multiple references to "Tristram Shandy" in his novel "The Flying House, or Conversations with Milord" (the "milord" of the title being Sterne). In "Surprised by Joy", C. S. Lewis refers to "Tristram Shandy" in the context of trying to describe his interactions with his own father: My father — but these words, at the head of a paragraph, will carry the reader's mind inevitably to Tristram Shandy. On second thoughts I am content that they should.