During the 19th century, the novel as a form underwent radical development and writers of prose fiction began to allow their creativity to mingle with realistic conventions. Authors such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot created a new type 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 those of 19th-century novels – many authors then seemed to have difficulty preventing themselves from incorporating their own experiences into their work – and the novel as a form was considered by many to be a very bourgeois idea, as the rise of the novel coincided with the melting of the middle class into British society. This emerging bourgeoisie became the audience to which the authors of this period addressed themselves. Many of these novels were early versions of the "bildungsroman," or the coming-of-age novel that follows a child's spiritual, moral, and psychological progression to adulthood. These works were very often highly embellished autobiographies of their authors (a great example of this type of novel is Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe), as opposed to the creative literary works we are familiar with today as readers. The novel began to develop in the 19th century and Victorian novelists wanted to make the novel much more exciting and interesting, but also turn it into a meaningful and serious art form. As Martin Ade-Onojobi-Bennett writes: "the novel developed towards a deeper philosophical analysis of the implications of a situation and towards a more careful, realistic and 'poetic' experience. There was a tendency to emphasize the daily life of the community...... middle of article ......a Fludernik, An Introduction to Narratology (Routledge: Abingdon, 2009) p. 56George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Telle 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 May 10, 2012] George Eliot, Middlemarch ed . Gregory Maertz (Broadview Press Ltd: Canada, 2004) p.94Joshua 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 May 10, 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. 2-3 Eliot, Middlemarch