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 "grave and sober account" of Cicero's grief for the death of his daughter Tullia. His text is filled with allusions and references to the leading thinkers and writers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Pope and Swift were major influences on Sterne and "Tristram Shandy". Satires of Pope and Swift formed much of the humour of "Tristram Shandy", but Swift's sermons and Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" also contributed ideas and frameworks Sterne explored throughout the novel. Other major influences are Cervantes, and Montaigne's "Essays", as well as the significant inter-textual debt to "The Anatomy of Melancholy", Swift's "Battle of