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

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. See more