It is argued that the study of the growth of the music hall industry contributes to several issues of significance to cultural geography. Theoretically, the emergence of a highly commercialised leisure industry sheds light upon the relationship between economic structures and the production of culture. Substanti vely, the music hall was a dominant cultural form during the period of the emergence of British nationalism. It is argued that the study of music hall contributes to the debate surrounding the timing of, and the mechanisms involved in the creation of a national culture in Britain. In analysing the transformation of the music halls this thesis draws upon the general theoretical framework of the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School - as formulated in the Culture Industry hypothesis - and integrates their insights with the more historically specific perspective provide by the theories of the organisation of capital. Chapter 2 begins to unfold the geographical dimension to the music hall industry through the construction of an outline of the spatial distribution of music halls in England and Wales. It then focuses on the integration of the independent units which made up this distribution into a unified network largely through the emergence of music hall syndicates, which owned music halls in several locations, from the 1890s. Subsequent chapters are focused on the factors which enabled and encouraged the development of these large, highly capitalised music hall companies. Chapter 3 is concerned with the examination of patterns of investment in the music hall business, and the profitability of music hall companies. It stresses the importance of the adoption of limited liability status as a prerequisite for the advent of investment on a scale large enough to support music hall syndicates. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the elaboration of the complex bureaucratic hierarchies within music hall companies, which were necessary in order to ensure the efficient management of these large scale, and spatially extended, music hall companies. The chapters argue that the control of decision-making passed from the hands of proprietors with an intimate knowledge of popular culture , often gained initially as publicans, into those of directors with specialist administrative skills obtained outside of the music hall business . Lawyers and accountants were prominent in this transformation. This change in entrepreneurial personnel was reflected in changes in the policies adopted by music hall syndicates, including the development of more sophisticated planning techniques. Chapter 6 examines the effect on the functioning of the music hall industry of the emergence of music hall syndicates. During the 1900s this led to the intensification of competition within the industry. The control of artists became central to this competitive process, and stimulated the sophistication of the 'star system'. It argues that the desire .0f syndicates to obtain and retain exclusive control over performers contained an imperative towards the geographical expansion of syndicates. This competition between syndicates stimulated rapid wage inflation in the industry. In order to stop this wage inflation, and as a reaction to the variety Artists Federation strike of 1907, syndicates began to abandon their competitive policies in favour of cooperation. By 1922, the main syndicates had all become involved in an effective monopoly of the music hall industry. This transformation facilitated the rapid flow of artists around the circuits of these companies. However, the extent to which this represents the creation of a national music hall culture is limited by the facts that these syndicates generally limited their operations to large cities, and that local and regional circuits not integrated into this national network continued to flourish