Harper (Augustin) - the father of Mignon, as well as the brother of Sperata Laertes - member of the theater troupe and friend to Wilhelm Philine - actress in Wilhelm's troupe The Abbé - member of the Tower Society Prince - lover of French Theater Baron - Count puts him in charge of Melina's theater troupe Count - hires Melina's theater troupe and houses them in his castle Countess - sister of Natalie, Lothario, and Friedrich Jarno - officer; member of the Tower Society and future husband of Lydie Doctor - in the service of Lothario's family Lydie - Lothario's former lover; Jarno's fiancée Therese - Lothario's future wife Aurelie - actress and Serlo's sister The Beautiful Soul - author of the "Confessions of a Beautiful Soul" [Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele] (Book VI); aunt of Natalie, Lothario, Friedrich, and the Countess. Felix - son of Wilhelm and Mariane Serlo - theater director Friedrich - member of the Tower Society; brother to Natalie, Lothario, and the Countess Lothario - member of the Tower Society; brother to Natalie, the Countess, and Friedrich Natalie - Wilhelm's "beautiful Amazon" and future wife; sister to Lothario, Friedrich, and the Countess Sperata - Mignon's mother and sister to Augustin ("the Harper") Marchese Cipriani - Mignon's uncle and Augustin's brother; from Italy Origins Goethe's work on the novel began in the 1770s. An early version of the work, unpublished during Goethe's lifetime, was discovered in the early twentieth century, and published under the title Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Calling (Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung). When the Apprenticeship was completed in the mid-1790s, it was to a great extent through the encouragement and criticism of Goethe's close friend and collaborator Friedrich Schiller that it took its final shape. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre ("Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years" or Wilhelm Meister's Travels), the sequel to the Apprenticeship, was already planned in the 1790s, but did not appear in its first edition until 1821, and in its final form until 1829. Genre Further books patterned after this novel have been called Bildungsroman ("novels of formation"), despite the fact that Wilhelm's "Bildung" ("education", or "formation of character") is ironized by the narrator at many points. According to Andrew Crumey, "while Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is billed as the classic coming-of-age tale, or Bildungsroman, it’s really far more than that: a story of education and disillusionment, a novel of ideas ranging across literature, philosophy and politics, a