-The book innovates by bridging two interdisciplinary fields, urban history and life writing studies. - It captures the ‘Longue durée’; the development of life writing and urban life from 18th century to today, including digital forms and practices. - Most chapters reflect on the life stories of ‘ordinary’ people (workers, women, migrants, queer subjects) who have been marginalized and are still under-represented in scholarly research. Among these figures are those who have achieved fame or iconic status, like Anne Frank, whose stories will be examined from a fresh and innovative perspective.

Marleen Rensen is a senior lecturer in Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam. She specializes in literary engagement and life writing and has a particular interest in the lives of French and German artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.