What is the sentimental novel?

People discussing the sentimental novel often begin by observing the genre's remarkable commercial success. Sentimental novels, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Wide, Wide World (1850) by Susan Warner, and The Lamplighter (1854) by Maria Cummins were best-sellers when the mass market for novels was a relatively new phenomenon (Davidson 16–37, Gilmore 46–54). Nathaniel Hawthorne famously complained, “What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the Lamplighter, and other books neither better nor worse? – worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the 100,000” (Fern xxxiv). More recently, critics have sharply differed on the significance of the genre's popularity – some seeing it as a sign of the sentimental novel's expressive power and others as evidence of the culture's vapidity (e.g., Tompkins 124, Douglas 114). These discussions often overlook a revealing point of connection between the sensational romance and the sentimental novel. Before the extraordinary sales of Uncle Tom's Cabin (estimated at 5 million before the Civil War), the biggest seller in American fiction had been George Lippard's The Quaker City (1845) (Gilmore 54). A marketing expert trying to understand the comparable popularity of such ostensibly different productions would be quick to note that they share an emphasis on powerful emotion. Both genres seek to produce in the reader an overwhelming emotional reaction, and both genres are willing to shock the reader in order to generate the desired intensity of feeling.