By the outbreak of the First World War England had become the world's first mass urban society. In just over sixty years the proportion of town-dwellers had risen from 50 to 80 per cent, and during this period many of the most crucial developments in English urban society had taken place.

This book provides a uniquely comprehensive analysis of those developments - conurbations, suburbs, satellite towns, garden cities, and seaside resorts. The author assesses the importance of London, the provincial cities, and manufacturing centres, he also examines the continuing influence of the small country town and `rural' England on political, economic, and cultural growth. In many respects, P. J. Waller's book is a general social history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century
England, seen from an urban perspective. It is both scholarly and immensely readable.