The thesis of ‘urban decline’ in the late Middle Ages has been largely based on changes within incorporated boroughs. Loughborough was a small town in Leicestershire, closely involved in intra-regional exchange between three different farming regions. By the late fourteenth century, if not before, its central precinct had a definite urban form, including a specialized marketing form. Indicators (such as demographic estimates, litigation, and property-holding) suggest that the town did not suffer any substantial decline in the late Middle Ages. Structural changes in the countrysides, with a greater emphasis on specialization of production, may have maintained the town as a centre of exchange and consumption.

This article reviews research on autobiographical texts written by artisans and other members of the urban popular classes during the early modern era. After reviewing some of the ways in which urban history has incorporated personal literature by authors from diverse social backgrounds, it explores the meaning of the term ‘popular autobiography’. After examining the contribution of this unique historical source to the study of urban politics, society and culture, the essay then focuses on the specific question of what autobiography can reveal about the study of popular sociability. A preliminary list of popular autobiographers figures in the appendix.

The Guild of Help was formed at Bradford in 1904 with the idea of introducing a new, more community-based, approach to deal with the increasingly important problem of poverty. It emerged to overcome the failures of charity and the threat of increased state intervention, seeking instead to get all the community to take responsibility for the poor. The movement spread rapidly and soon became a major constituent of voluntary urban relief in Britain. Yet, in the end, its community approach failed, largely because solving the problem of poverty was well beyond its means, and intent, but also because it was unable to draw the churches, the working classes and charities into working with the well-regulated system of help for the poor which it envisaged.

For much of the 1970s and early 1980s historians using an urban focus to analyse social class, social stratification and political conflict led the field. The work of John Foster, Geoffrey Crossick, Robert Gray, Patrick Joyce and others helped set an agenda to which all social historians responded. Today research of a similar type can easily be found, but even whilst this shows a high degree of conceptual sophistication and empirical rigour it seems less central to the discipline and to the broad concerns of social history than was the case even a decade ago. In this speculative paper I reflect on some of the reasons for this and consider the contemporary prospects for studies of the relationship between urban history and social class.