This chapter contextualises the use of literary fiction as valuable source for urban history within a broader paradigm shift towards (new) materialisms, and from the perspective of literary urban studies and spatial humanities. It examines the methodological and theoretical questions at stake in drawing on literary sources within urban history, and introduces how the various chapters in this volume will address the questions raised in the introduction, with three specific, although intertwined, areas of focus: literary fiction as urban materiality, literary narratives as social investigations of the material city, and the narrating of silenced material lives.