Providing a new literary history of capitalism and the novel in the long Romantic period, this thought-provoking study tells the story of how insatiable desire came to be central to our understanding of both fictional character and economic activity. In telling this story, Samuel Rowe draws attention to a largely neglected topic in novel studies: the villain. Reading fiction from Samuel Richardson's epistolary masterpieces and oriental tales to Minerva Press potboilers and radical social realism, he examines the broad narrative patterns that shape the use of villains as characters in the long romantic period. Through villainous characters, the period's fiction asks searching questions about the nature of work, consumption, and end-oriented human activity. Rowe makes a case for understanding want – as both lack and desire – as a central preoccupation during the cultural adaptation to liberal capitalism.