During the 1960s and 1970s, the growth of interest in the urban past was one of the most prominent developments in historical studies in the United Kingdom. In large part, this was due to the work of the late H. J. Dyos, Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester, as teacher, writer and propagandist. This book brings together some of Dyos's most important and influential essays, written over nearly thirty years. At one level, this book may be read as a fitting memorial to the work, influence and writings of a first-rate historian; at another, it furnishes an indispensable guide to the study of urban development and the nineteenth-century city and to the perspective which that study affords on the urban present.