Sentimental novel in the context of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (UK: /ˈruːsoʊ/, US: /ruːˈsoʊ/; French: [ʒɑ̃ʒak ʁuso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, philosophe, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.

Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, which argues that private property is the source of inequality, and The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order, are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction. His Émile, or On Education (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published Confessions (completed in 1770), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished Reveries of the Solitary Walker (composed 1776–1778)—exemplified the late 18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing.

Jane Austen (/ˈɒstɪn, ˈɔːstɪn/ OST-in, AW-stin; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.

Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are implicit critiques of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her use of social commentary, realism, wit, and irony have earned her acclaim amongst critics and scholars.

The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature is a 1789 American sentimental novel written in epistolary form by William Hill Brown and is widely considered to be the first American novel. The Power of Sympathy was Brown's first novel. The characters' struggles illustrate the dangers of seduction and the pitfalls of giving in to one's passions, while advocating the moral education of women and the use of rational thinking as ways to prevent the consequences of such actions.

As a literary mode, sentimentalism, the practice of being sentimental, and thus tending towards making emotions and feelings the basis of a person's actions and reactions, as opposed to reason, has been a recurring aspect of world literature. Sentimentalism includes a variety of aspects in literature, such as sentimental poetry, the sentimental novel, and the German sentimentalist music movement, Empfindsamkeit. European literary sentimentalism arose during the Age of Enlightenment, partly as a response to sentimentalism in philosophy. In eighteenth-century England, the sentimental novel was a major literary genre. The genre developed in England between 1730 and 1780 at the time of high enlightenment from where it spread to other European literatures. Its philosophical basis primarily came from Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, a pupil of John Locke.