The Bildungsroman defines a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which character change is thus extremely important. The term coming-of-age novel is sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman, but its use is usually wider and less technical. •

Examples:

• The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)
• Candide by Voltaire (1759)
• Émile: or, On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1787)
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
• Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (1913)
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916)
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920)
• Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (1959)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
• The Favourite Game by Leonard Cohen (1963)
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson (1985)
• The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd (2002)
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
• The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (2009)
• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling