In Beyond the Metropolis: The Changing Image of Urban Britain, 1780–1880, Katy Layton-Jones seeks to challenge the stereotype of dark satanic mills and grinding poverty that has come to dominate representations of industrial towns in the nineteenth century. She argues for a more nuanced understanding of these towns and their representation, drawing on a wide range of visual evidence. This includes topographical prints and railway guide vignettes, advertisements, panoramas, and views applied to promotional goods and souvenirs.

Rather than suggesting that urbanization wrought an abrupt and unattractive change in the environment or its representation, Layton-Jones emphasizes the continuity between the industrial town and the Georgian townscape. She draws attention to the different ways artists were able to accommodate the growing scale and novelty of the industrial town by utilizing various types of urban prospect. Her assertion that the exciting new industrial sites illustrated in guidebooks posed a challenge to the dominance of more historical towns as tourist attractions is a valuable one. Visual representations of Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Leeds, and Sheffield helped to shape ideas and raise awareness of places that had previously been remote or largely unknown.

Layton-Jones traces the origin of the stereotype of the demonic city to the influence of the social problem novels of the 1840s and 50s. The most famous example is Dickens's Hard Times, published in 1854, but in the same years we also find examples of the genre that demonstrate a more balanced approach that is worthy of consideration here. One such novel is Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855), which, like Hard Times, also appeared in Household Words. It offers a reappraisal of her earlier representation of the harsh life in an industrial town, Mary Barton (1848). In this classic buildungsroman, the central character undergoes a gradual shift in perception of the industrial town of Milton (based on Manchester), from initial ignorant loathing to final appreciation, and by the end of the book it is clear that Gaskell hopes to have effected a similar change in the reader. The plot includes several episodes that could have been influenced by the types of images Layton-Jones discusses, from the first glimpse of the “deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over” Milton, which is glimpsed from the railway carriage, to the dramatic riot scene. However, it is the wider context that Gaskell evokes which is of particular interest here. She notes that the name of John Thornton, manufacturer of Milton, is recognized by merchants across the globe, yet remains unknown to the inhabitants of drawing rooms a few hours away in London. The lack of political representation faced by the newly wealthy industrial bourgeoisie, even in the years following the 1832 Reform Act, was a constant source of tension and frustration for men who wielded considerable power within their own towns and felt their industry to be fuelling the national economy. If we read the images that Layton-Jones presents within this context, they take on additional meanings and can be seen as attempts to refute the lazy stereotypes and to legitimize the status of these towns and their people.

Layton-Jones sees the use of Picturesque aesthetic conventions in early nineteenth-century prints as an attempt to convey values of stability and continuity that assuage the anxieties associated with industrialization. This reading could be usefully extended to the majority of the images discussed. Just as Gaskell's Mr. Thornton pays for lessons in classics in order to acquire the “polish” that he feels himself to be lacking, so images of the town are clothed in antique garb to demonstrate fashionable cultural sophistication. The images presented are suffused with classical tropes and motifs, from the “trophy shield” as a means to display exhibition goods to the florid cartouches that adorn advertisements and the widespread depiction of neoclassical architecture. Images that align new industrial signifiers with antique devices and established values can be read as an attempt to mitigate fears of industrialization and the rising power of the middle industrialists amongst the landed and aristocratic political elite. Layton-Jones interprets the rare depiction of a factory on the surface of high-quality porcelain as testament to the civic pride of the manufacturer who commissioned it; might not the scarcity of such objects rather suggest that most manufacturers chose to purchase luxury goods that conformed to the tastes of the class to which they hoped to gain admittance?

Layton-Jones acknowledges that these representations of the town were often met with ambivalence, if not outright dismissal. The images of riot and unrest discussed in her final chapter reveal the eventual consequence of persistent disavowal. Here, then, we have two sides of the same coin: persuasive images of the town as progressive but respectful of the existing order juxtaposed with scenes depicting the chaos that resulted from a refusal to deliver meaningful change—the imagery of carrot and stick.

Beyond the Metropolis traces an important alternate history to those that portray the nineteenth-century industrial town in terms of either wholehearted “celebration” or “despair” (2). There are moments in the text when Layton-Jones comes tantalizingly close to engaging with the wider implications of her findings, but these may be beyond the scope of this already wide-ranging study. Certainly this is an enjoyable, refreshing text addressing a fascinating topic and one that provides a solid starting point for further interpretation and debate.