sentiment, sensibility, novel of

sentiment, sensibility, novel of. The object of this type of novel was to illustrate the alliance of acute sensibility with true virtue. An adherence to strict morality and honour, combined with sympathy and feeling, were the marks of the man or woman of sentiment. The cult may be traced particularly to the work of Marivaux, Richardson, and S. Fielding; the most popular and influential novels to which they gave rise were probably H. Brooke's The Fool of Quality, Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, and Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling, together with the work of F. Brooke, C. Lennox, and F. Sheridan. Late in the century Lamb's The Tale of Rosamund Gray (1798) was in the mainstream of such novels, but the cult was then dying. The early chapters of J. Austen's Northanger Abbey mock the ‘refined susceptibilities’ of the novel of sentiment, and Sense and Sensibility was intended to demonstrate the serious consequences of following its standards. (See also novel, rise of the.)