The Longest Journey (1907) is a bildungsroman (a "novel of formation", a genre that arose during the German Enlightenment, in which the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a usually young protagonist.) by E.M. Forster. Rickie Elliot is a student at early 20th century Cambridge, a university that seems like paradise to him, amongst bright if cynical companions, when he receives a visit from two friends, an engaged young woman, Agnes Pembroke, and her older brother, Herbert. The Pembrokes are Rickie?s only friends from home. An orphan who.