Lost Dundee brings the second city of renaissance Scotland back to life showing, through previously undiscovered photographs and drawings, the life and the maritime quarter of this great port. It illustrates Dundee's transformation into a major Georgian town at the centre of the flax trade between St Petersburg and the USA, with the development of major public buildings a result of the influx of wealth into the region. This book goes on to examine Dundee's next transformation into the jute capital of the world. Its identity was transformed by the arrival of railways, which separated the town from the sea, and by the great mills and factories which engulfed it on both sides. The pressures upon medieval Dundee proved so great that in 1871 the process of replacing it with grandiose Victorian boulevards began.

The final section illustrates the changes wrought in the twentieth century with the death of jute and its replacement as the city's major employer by tertiary education.
This book draws particularly upon the rich visual history sources of Charles Lawson's drawings of old Dundee in the Central Library, the DC Thomson photographic collection, and the University of Dundee Archives. Essential to the understanding of this constantly re-generating city, this book contains 150 drawings, photographs and plans of Dundee.