'Nobilitas sola est atq; unica Virtus': Spying and the Politics of Virtue in The Golden Spy; or, A Political Journal of the British Nights Entertainments (1709).

This article reassesses the current scholarly tendency to interpret Charles Gildon's The Golden Spy (1709) as the first fully fledged English object narrative by examining this fiction as a social critique of the reformation of manners movement in the late Stuart period. Special attention is paid to its contemporaneous reception, literary precursors and contributions to the debates concerning moral reform. The article argues that Gildon's fictional experimentation, not least the deployment of narrating spy gold coins, seeks not just to delight by its novelty but also to dynamise contemporary readers' reflection on the godly reformation and its politics of virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]