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
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Sterne incorporated into "Tristram Shandy" many passages taken almost word for word from Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy", Francis Bacon's "Of Death", Rabelais and many more, and rearranged them to serve the new meaning intended in "Tristram Shandy". "Tristram Shandy" was highly praised for its originality, and nobody noticed these borrowings until years after Sterne's death. The first to note them was physician and poet John Ferriar, who did not see them negatively and commented: Victorian critics of the 19th century, who were hostile to Sterne for the alleged obscenity of his prose, used Ferriar's findings to defame Sterne,