Irish prose fiction in 1726 published the first great work by an Anglo-Irish writer, "Gulliver's Travels". Though this had no specifically Irish relevance, it set a standard for later writers in English. The eighteenth century saw the birth in Ireland of two distinguished novelists, Laurence Sterne (1713 – 1768) and Oliver Goldsmith (1728 – 1774), both of whom, however, made their careers in England. Despite this, their oeuvre is often included in the Anglo-Irish literary canon. Sterne published "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" (1759–1767), a satire on the biographical novel. Goldsmith, best known as a poet, published "The Vicar of
John Hall-Stevenson and Devonshire" (1763), "A Pastoral Puke; a second Sermon preached before the people called Whigs; by an Independent" (1764), "Makarony Fables, with the new Fable of the Bees" (1767), "Lyric Consolations, with the Speech of Alderman Wilkes delivered in a Dream" (1768) and "An Essay upon the King's Friends" (1776). Hall-Stevenson gave some financial support to his friend Sterne, who often visited him at Skelton, and they liked to race chariots over the sands at Saltburn, and Hall-Stevenson appears under the name of "Eugenius" in Sterne's novels "Tristram Shandy" and "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy". This was unfinished