A highly successful Symposium on Transcendental Number Theory was held under the auspices of the London Mathematical Society at the University of Durham in July, 1986, and the present volume is an account of the proceedings of that meeting. Some fifty mathematicians were present, including most of the leading specialists in the field, and the lectures reflected the remarkable research activity that has taken place in this area in recent years. Indeed, as became apparent, the evolution of transcendence, since the 1960s, into a fertile theory with numerous and widespread applications has been one of the most exciting and important developments of modern mathematics.