The prose fictions of the early eighteenth century were preoccupied with wandering protagonists circulating through a disparate society accumulating not only moral experience but also the wealth that would enable them to settle down at the end of novels. Simultaneously the emerging discourse of political economy posed questions about the nature of value, the function of circulation, and the role of the individual that were similar to questions being raised within fiction. And while characters circulated within novels, novels circulated within society. The novel was therefore both a forum for the exploration of the system of exchange, and an object within that developing system.

Several writers on the origins of the novel have noted the recurrence of words with an economic significance in the lexis of creating and disseminating stories. “Account,” “circulate,” “tale,” “tell,” “retail,” “recount,” “credit” and “creditable” all have a commercial as well as a narrative significance, emphasizing the importance of circulation and creditworthiness in establishing the value of both stories and coins. The overlap in terminology is matched by an overlap in personnel. As well as being the acknowledged “father of the novel,” Defoe contributed to the developing discourse of economic analysis, while Swift wrote about coinage in his Drapier's Letters before penning Gulliver's Travels. This chapter will examine the relationship between economics and fiction, through analysis of the significance of money in some of the narratives of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, showing how literature not only explored systems of circulation and exchange, but also revealed anxieties about the dangers of an economy based on paper money, credit, speculation, and consumption.