This title was first published in 2002: This collection of essays looks at how the urban environment was fundamental to the development of printing, and how in turn, towns and cities used print culture to spread urban ideas and values to society at large. It sets out to demonstrate the centrality of printing and publishing to the understanding of urban culture, and in so doing engages with a number of recurrent historical issues, such as the role of printing in urban economies, the construction of metropolitan identities and the testing of moral boundaries.

Contents: Preface; Introduction, Malcolm Gee and Tim Kirk; Rouen and its printers from the 15th to the 19th century, Jean-Dominique Mellot; Lyons' printers and booksellers from the 15th to the 19th century, Dominique Varry; Gavarni's Parisian population reproduced, David W.S. Gray; The literary dangers of the city: policing 'immoral books' in Berlin, 1850-1880, Sarah L. Leonard; Readers, browsers, strangers, spectators: narrative forms and metropolitan encounters in 20th-century Berlin, Peter Fritzsche; Commercial spies and cultural invaders: the French press, Pénétration Pacifique and xenophobic nationalism in the shadow of war, Fae Brauer; Neutrality under threat: freedom, use and 'abuse' of the press in Switzerland, 1914-19, Debbie Lewer; The 'cultured' city: the art press in Berlin and Paris in the early 20th century, Malcolm Gee; Text and image in the construction of an urban readership: allied propaganda in France during the Second World War, Valerie Holman; Structures of the typescript, Catherine Viollet; Index.