British literature a genre which developed during the second half of the 18th century. Among the most famous sentimental novels in English are Samuel Richardson's "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded" (1740), Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766), and Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (1759 – 67). Another novel genre also developed in this period. In 1778, Frances Burney (1752–1840) wrote "Evelina", one of the first novels of manners. Fanny Burney's novels' indeed "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen". The graveyard poets were a number of pre-Romantic English poets, writing in the 1740s and later, whose works are characterised by their gloomy meditations
Laurence Sterne Foster Wallace. Italo Calvino referred to "Tristram Shandy" as the "undoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century". The Russian Formalist writer Viktor Shklovsky regarded "Tristram Shandy" as the archetypal, quintessential novel, of which all other novels are mere subsets: ""Tristram Shandy" is the most typical novel of world literature." However, the leading critical opinions of "Tristram Shandy" tend to be markedly polarised in their evaluations of its significance. Since the 1950s, following the lead of DW Jefferson, there are those who argue that, whatever its legacy of influence may be, "Tristram Shandy" in its original context actually represents