A Bildungsroman is a novel which traces the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character from (usually) childhood to maturity.
The term, originally from German, translates to "novel of education" or "novel of formation" in English.
One of the foremost examples of this genre is Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Other examples include Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and Steppenwolf, Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and David Copperfield. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contain elements of the Bildungsroman, as does the 13th century Hrafnkels saga.
More contemporary examples are Iain Banks' novel The Crow Road, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, Ursula K. Le Guin's fantasy novel A Wizard of Earthsea, Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One, John Ringo and David Weber's Empire of Man series, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
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