Table of Contents

Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. A culture of commodities: 'Trivial Things' in The Rape of the Lock; 2. Cultivating the bubble: some investing contemporaries; 3. 'Some Very Bad Effects': The strange case of Gulliver's Travels; 4. 'Bilk'd of Virtue': The Beggar's Opera; 5. 'Abusing the City's Best Good Men': Pope's poetry of the 1730s; 6. 'Illusion on the town': Figuring out credit in The Dunciad; Bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

An original study of the early eighteenth century's financial revolution in the literature of the period.

Reviews

"...this most original study centers on the effects that the financial revolution in English society...had on some of the major writers of the period...The author's approach to these works from this specialized, political-economical point of view is consistent, resourceful, elucidating, and convincing; Nicolson...has presented a very valuable argument for viewing these 18th-century writers 'in terms of a developing political economy that was permanently changing their world as they wrote'...Highly recommended to those interested in 18th-century history and literature." R. G. Brown