During the nineteenth century, the form of the novel underwent radical development, and authors of prose fiction began to allow their creativity to intertwine with realist conventions. Authors such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot created a new kind of imaginative prose writing, straddling the line between imagination and reality. Before this, the conventions of the novel were much more historical and factual than nineteenth-century novels – many authors at this point seemed to have difficulty refraining from inserting their own experiences into their works – and the novel as a form was considered by many a very bourgeois idea, as the rise of the novel coincided with the merging of the middle class into British society. This emerging middle class became the intended audience for the authors of this time. Many of these novels were early versions of the 'bildungsroman', or coming of age novel, which followed a child's spiritual, moral and psychological progression into adulthood. These works were most often highly embellished autobiographies of their authors (a prime example of this type of novel is Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe) in contrast to the creative works of literature that we readers are familiar with today. The novel began to develop during the nineteenth century, and Victorian novelists wanted to make it much more exciting and interesting, but also turn it into a meaningful and serious form or art. As Martin Ade-Onojobi-Bennett writes: 'the novel developed towards a deeper philosophical analysis of the implications of a situation and a more careful, realistic and 'poetic' rendering of experience. There was a tendency to place emphasis on the everyday life of the comm...... half of the paper ......to Fludernik, An Introduction to Narratology (Routledge: Abingdon, 2009) p.56George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Tale ed. Nancy Hendry (University of Iowa Press: Iowa City, 1994) p. 3Joshua Tucker, 'Words We Couldn't Say: The Narrator's Search For Meaning in Middlemarch' (2004) Available electronically at http://hdl.handle.net/10066/646 [accessed 10 May 2012] George Eliot, Middlemarch ed. Gregory Maertz (Broadview Press Ltd: Canada, 2004) p.94 Joshua Tucker, 'Words We Couldn't Say: The Narrator's Search For Meaning in Middlemarch' (2004) Available electronically at http://hdl.handle.net /10066/ 646 [accessed 10 May 2012]Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 77Eugene Goodheart, 'The Licensed Trespasser: The Omniscient Narrator in Middlemarch' in Novel Practices: Classic Modern Fiction (Transaction Publishers: New Jersey, 2004) pp. 2-3Eliot, Middlemarch