Anton Reiser: A Psychological Novel (Classics of European Literature)

Published in 1790, this book follows the first 21 years of the author's life. The hero has an unhappy childhood amid parental discord, is apprenticed to a pietistic hatmaker, is sent away to school, runs away from school to go on to the stage but fails as an actor. The book leaves his problem unsolved, but is also an exploration of fiction as psychological process, and one of the great 18th-century autobiographies.