Cultural Aspects
The sentimental novel complemented social trends of the time toward humanism and the heightened value of human life. The literature focused on weaker members of society, such as orphans and condemned criminals, and allowed readers to identify and sympathize with them. This translated to growing sentimentalism within society, and led to social movements calling for change, such as the abolition of the death penalty and of slavery. Instead of the death penalty, popular sentiment called for the rehabilitation of criminals, rather than harsh punishment. Frederick Douglass himself was inspired to stand against his own bondage and slavery in general in his famous Narrative by the speech by the sentimentalist playwright Sheridan in The Columbian Orator detailing a fictional dialogue between a master and slave.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther was highly sentimental and immediately extremely popular throughout Europe, and even inspired young people who could relate to Werther's sorrows to commit suicide. It is also an excellent example of an epistolary novel, an especially typical form for eighteenth-century novels of sensibility, beginning with the influential novels of Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740), Clarissa (1748), and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). The latter was an especially important influence on Jane Austen, who references it repeatedly in her letters and began a dramatic adaptation of the work for the amusement of her family.
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