This book, from a pan-European network of historians from twelve countries, examines the ways that the European urban experience was gendered over time and across borders. Situated in eighteenth-century urban culture, the chapters in this volume evaluate the economic activities and agency of women in these commercial communities. It addresses a number of questions which speak to how women specifically negotiated and articulated their relationship to the gendered urban economy. The book is an integrated collection of local studies, employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches, but with a very coherent approach. It is embedded in an urban / economic / gender approach which unites the chapters and which is drawn together by the editors in their introduction and afterword.