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Wilhelm Meister鈥檚 Apprenticeship (1795鈥�1796), Goethe鈥檚 second novel, is a foundational work in the history of the genre鈥攑erhaps the first Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story focusing on the growth and self-realization of the main character. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young man living in the mid-1700s who strives to break free from the restrictive bourgeois world of his upbringing and seek fulfillment as an actor and playwright. Goethe鈥檚 novel had a huge impact on the Romantics. Hegel, Schelling, Novalis, and Schopenhauer considered it one of the most important novels yet written. Schlegel famously called it one of the 鈥渢hree tendencies of the age,鈥� along with the French Revolution and the philosophy of Fichte. And Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann composed songs to poems from the novel. It also had a major influence on nineteenth-century British writers, including Thomas Carlyle, who was its first English translator, and George Eliot. Drawn from Princeton鈥檚 authoritative collected works of Goethe, this is the definitive English version of a landmark of world literature.