Anne Nichols is best remembered as the author of Abie's Irish Rose, which opened in New York on 23 May 1922, ran for a then-record 2,327 performances and closed more than five years later on 22 October 1927. The play was first published in 1923 and was republished several times, though the 1937 Samuel French edition is standard. A comedic treatment of an interfaith marriage between a young Jewish man and his Irish Catholic bride who eventually succeed in their struggle to win their fathers' blessings, the popular success of the play was matched only by the overwhelming condemnation it provoked among many of the most prominent theater critics in the United States. A Broadway hit characterized by one contemporary observer, Benjamin De Casseres, writing in Theatre Magazine (July 1927), as "a sociological phenomenon," Abie's Irish Rose was dismissed by critics who deplored its sentimentality, predictability, and use of broadly drawn ethnic stereotypes. Nichols's long career...