David Copperfield and Great Expectations are widely regarded as two of the earliest examples of the Bildungsroman (formational novel) in the English language. Telling the stories of David and Pip from their childhood to a point in their fictional lives at which the process of their formation is completed, Dickens's two semi-autobiographical novels have long been considered alongside similar narratives by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Carlyle, Honoré de Balzac, Thomas Mann, Henry James and George Santayana. It seems that both novels – more than his other works – allow critics to include Dickens in comparative studies because here he follows recognisable conventions and patterns of the formational novel. It has been argued conversely, however, that neither David Copperfield nor Great Expectations are typical Bildungsromane, as they fall short of the typical characteristics of the genre, while several German critics have altogether dismissed the Bildungsroman in English-speaking countries as following a different, uncharacteristic pattern. It is beyond question, however, that David Copperfield and Great Expectations are two significant contributions to the nineteenth-century, trans-European discourse about the formation of character, which is rendered by Dickens in a quintessentially Victorian fashion.

The question of whether or not Dickens's two first-person narratives belong to the family of the Bildungsroman has preoccupied critics for many decades. This is hardly surprising bearing in mind that any attempt at giving an authoritative answer is dependent on a universally accepted definition of the term Bildungsroman itself. This does not exist.