(Urban history is becoming increasingly popular in Europe, and in Ireland it is one of the most fruitful fields of research. The ten papers published in this volume are in response to the growing need for, and themselves reflect this increasing scholarly con-cern with, Irish urban history. They were originally read at the fourteenth Irish Conference of Historians, held in Belfast in 1979, and concern them-selves with a broad range of subjects at various historical periods: from urban life and plantation boroughs in medieval Ireland through a portrait of Armagh in the eighteenth century, to the development of Cork, Belfast and Dublin in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Town in Ireland offers a serious response to many of the basic questions about urban history and will provide a stimulus to future research not only within Ireland, but also in the general area of urban studies.Articles and contributors: Socio-Economic Problems of the Late Medieval Irish Town (Gearóid MacNiocaill); Plantation Boroughs in Medieval Ireland . (Geoffrey Martin); Ulster Plantation Towns, 1609-41 (R.J. Hunter); Armagh 1770: Portrait of an Urban Community (Leslie Clarkson); Urban Politics in Ireland 1801-31 (Peter Jupp); The Economic and Social Structure of Nineteenth Century Cork (Maura Murphy); Industrialisation and Health in Belfast in the Early Nineteenth Century (Peter Froggatt)