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 major European trading centre. New possibilities emerged for cultural exchange and combination, social and political order, and literary expression. Integrating literary and historical analysis, and drawing on recent work in literary theory and cultural studies, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London provides a comprehensive account of the changing image and influence of London in lyrics, ballads, jests, epics, satires, plays, pageants, chronicles, treatises, sermons and official documents. Lawrence Manley shows how the literature and culture of London contributed to the new structures of capitalism, the process of 'behaviour urbanisation', and a paradoxical liberation of the individual through the city's concentrated power.