Compassionate Stranger

Maureen O’Rourke Murphy is the Joseph L. Dionne Professor of Teaching, Literacy, and Leadership at Hofstra University. She is coeditor of An Irish Literature Reader: Poetry, Prose, Drama, the editor of Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger and Annals of the Famine in Ireland in 1847, 1848, and 1849, and the director of New York State’s Great Irish Famine Curriculum.

“Murphy’s beautifully written book is a fitting tribute to the kindness and compassion of Asenath Nicholson. It is also the work of an accomplished historian who has devoted five decades in pursuit of her fascinating—if at times shadowy—subject.” —Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies“[Nicholson’s] sharp, compassionate, first-hand accounts of the human dimension of Irish poverty were rooted in direct experience. For this reason her evidence is of exceptional value. Her life and work have found an exceptional chronicler.”—Irish Literary Supplement“Compassionate Stranger is not only a notable academic achievement but is also a readable and tantalizing story of one powerful woman’s drive to bring justice to the marginalized.”—Irish America“Meticulously researched, beautifully written, Compassionate Stranger is a gift to scholarship, literature, Ireland, and to readers everywhere who seek to understand both the hardship and nobility of the poor.”—Roger Rosenblatt, essayist for Time magazine and PBS NewsHour.