Sentimentalism, which is to be distinguished from sensibility, was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction beginning in the eighteenth century in reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age.
Another example of this type of novel is Frances Burney's Evelina (1778), wherein the heroine, while naturally good, in part for being country-raised, hones her politeness when, while visiting London, she is educated into propriety.
[5][full citation needed] On the other hand, the Encyclopædia Britannica online comments, that despite "patches of emotional excess", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol (1843), "Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist".
[4] The first sentimental novel to be published in the United States, William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, appeared in 1791 and dealt with themes of nationhood, seduction, and incest.
Hill's novel was followed by Hannah Webster Foster's immensely popular The Coquette, whose events were loosely based on the tragic biography of Massachusetts native Elizabeth Whitman, who gave birth to an illegitimate child and died soon after at a roadside tavern.
[7] The contrast between the heroic woman's actions and her foils is meant to draw sympathy to the character's plight and to instruct them about expected conduct of women.
[10] Frederick Douglass himself was inspired to stand against his own bondage and slavery in general in his famous Narrative by the speech by the playwright Sheridan in The Columbian Orator detailing a fictional dialogue between a master and slave.
The Gothic novel's story occurs in a distant time and place, often Medieval or Renaissance Europe (especially Italy and Spain), and involved the fantastic exploits of a virtuous heroine imperiled by dark, tyrannical forces beyond her control.
[13] Popular stylistic elements, such as the "discovery" of the original manuscript by the author (as in Walpole's The Castle of Otranto) or creating fragmented works by combining disjointed tales (seen in Sterne's A Sentimental Journey) were meant to suggest to the reader that there was no act of artistic creation to distort reality between the reader and the work, or that the emotional intensity and sincerity remained intact.