PhD ThesisThis thesis breaks with conventional distinctions between British adult and young adult fiction to offer a comparative study of ‘coming of age’ in the historical novel since the late 1980s. 1989 marks the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War and the symbolic end of the Cold War. It inaugurates a period of reflection in Britain on the relationship between the past and the future that centres on tropes of childhood, adolescence, adulthood and personal growth. Drawing on Erik Erikson’s theory of ‘identity crisis’, I bundle these manifold tropes together under the heading ‘coming of age’ in order to focus on these identities as transitional states of becoming rather than being. My thesis is split into four ...