One type of novel that has tended to be sidelined as a consequence of the critical emphasis on narrative coherence is found in a group of works which I have termed the ‘novels of circulation’. These were novels based neither on the adventures of an individual, nor on the correspondence of a group of friends, but on the exchange of an inanimate object. The central character – a penny, a bank-note, a dog, a cat, a peg, a hackney carriage or whatever – is passed from person to person, sold, exchanged, lost, found, swapped and so on, and recounts its adventures, its thoughts, and the characters it encounters in the course of its life. This form was utilised by Charles Gildon with the publication in 1709–10 of The Golden Spy, roughly based on Alain René Le Sage's Le Diable Boiteux, which had been translated in 1708 as The Devil Upon Two Sticks. In Le Sage's work the devil flies about the city taking the roofs off houses to expose what is going on below. In The Golden Spy the scandalous element of Le Sage is incorporated into a circulation format, as a louis d'or narrates a tale composed of a series of loosely connected scenes, containing political comment and satire, social satire, scandal and sexual intrigue. Crébillon's The Sofa, translated in 1742, rapidly achieved considerable notoriety in eighteenth-century Britain, and epitomised the importance of the roman à clef or chronique scandaleuse tradition within the novels of circulation, particularly in the early works, which were influenced by, or derived from, French originals.