In the two hundred years from 1475 London was transformed from a medieval commune into a metropolis of half a million people, a capital city, and a leading European trading center. Lawrence Manley provides a comprehensive account of the changing image and influence of London through its literature, including lyrics, ballads, jests, plays, pageants, chronicles, and treatises; and he shows how the literature and culture of London contributed to the new structures of capitalism, the process of "behavioral urbanization," and the liberation of the individual through the city's concentrated power.