Representing Public Credit: Credible Commitment, Fiction and the Rise of the Financial Subject - Hardcover

Public credit requires confidence and commitment from its users in order to function. Many important writers of the early eighteenth century debated whether such credit, embodied in the newly formed Bank of England, served the public good or the interests of the few. Such debate forms the historical underlay of this study, which focuses on texts that deal with finance both implicitly and explicitly. The works of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Frances Burney are explored alongside lesser-known works, including some early it-narratives, to give a fully-rounded view of the perception of public credit and its wider social implications.

Natalie Roxburgh is a Research Fellow in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Oldenburg, where her research interests include eighteenth-century and contemporary literature and, more specifically, the way scientist characters are represented in novels published in the past couple of decades. In 2011 she was awarded an Early Careers Seminar Grant by the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. This is her first single-authored monograph.