Compassionate stranger : Asenath Nicholson and the Great Irish Famine / Maureen O'Rourke Murphy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murphy, Maureen O'Rourke, author.

Series:

Irish studies.

Irish Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Missionaries--United States--19th century--Biography.

Missionaries.

Philanthropists--United States--19th century--Biography.

Philanthropists.

Ireland--History--Famine, 1845-1852.

Ireland.

Nicholson, Asenath, 1792-1855.

Nicholson, Asenath.

Famine (Ireland : 1845-1852).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (400 pages) : illustrations, photographs.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The first biography of Asenath Nicholson, Compassionate Stranger recovers the largely forgotten history of an extraordinary woman. Trained as a school teacher, Nicholson was involved in the abolitionist, temperance, and diet reforms of the day before she left New York in 1844 "to personally investigate the condition of the Irish poor." She walked alone throughout nearly every county in Ireland and reported on conditions in rural Ireland on the eve of the Great Irish Famine. She published Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger, an account of her travels in 1847. She returned to Ireland in December 1846 to do what she could to relieve famine suffering-first in Dublin and then in the winter of 1847-48 in the west of Ireland where the suffering was greatest. Nicholson's precise, detailed diaries and correspondence reveal haunting insights into the desperation of victims of the Famine and the negligence and greed of those who added to the suffering. Her account of the Great Irish Famine, Annals of the Famine in Ireland in 1847, 1848 and 1849, is both a record of her work and an indictment of official policies toward the poor: land, employment, famine relief. In addition to telling Nicholson's story, from her early life in Vermont and upstate New York to her better-known work in Ireland, Murphy puts Nicholson's own writings and other historical documents in conversation. This not only contextualizes Nicholson's life and work, but it also supplements the impersonal official records with Nicholson's more compassionate and impassioned accounts of the Irish poor.

Contents:

Chronology

Prologue

Puritan beginnings on the Vermont frontier

Social gospels, garrets, and cellars : the New York years, 1831-44

An errand in the wilderness : Nicholson in Ireland in 1844

"A city on a hill," 1845

"If this cup may not pass away from me" : Nicholson begins her famine mission

"Misery without mask" : Mayo in the winter of 1847-48

Back to Cork : "Ireland, I love thee still," 1848

Peace and progress, 1848-52 : Nicholson in the UK and on the Continent

Peace and progress, 1850-51 : lights and shades of Ireland

Last years

Afterword.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780815652892

0815652895

OCLC:

902702226