While the origins of the term roman personnel may be traced back to at least the late nineteenth century, and while it continues to enjoy largely unproblematic critical currency as a shorthand designating a subset of the French Romantic novel, there is little agreement amongst literary commentators as to what constitute the defining characteristics of the genre. The broad-brush definition of the personal novel as the fictional transposition of the lived experience of the author, and the general acknowledgement of the centrality of Rousseau's influence, which are common to most accounts, conceal significant divergences regarding the genre's thematic or formal attributes. Must a roman personnel be narrated in the first person? Is the roman personnel primarily autobiographical or fictional? Is the introspection of the roman personnel compatible with (realist) plot development? Depending on one's critical position in relation to these questions, the corpus of novels considered to be representative of the genre will vary, but will normally be drawn from the following long-list: Chateaubriand, Atala (1801) and René (1802); Staël, Delphine (1802) and Corinne (1807); Krüdener, Valérie (1803); Senancour, Obermann (1804); Constant, Adolphe (1816); Duras, Ourika (1824) and Édouard (1825); Sand, Lélia (1833); Sainte-Beuve, Volupté (1834); Musset, La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (1836); Balzac, Le Lys dans la vallée (1836); Nerval, Sylvie (1854); and Fromentin, Dominique (1862).

Whatever one's definition of the roman personnel, this list of titles highlights its concentration in two main periods: the very first years of the nineteenth century, and the early 1830s.