As one of the first writers in Ireland to use folk stories and legends in satirical fiction, Samuel Lover helped change British and American attitudes toward the Irish peasantry during a period of political turmoil. His success and influence was considerable, not only in literary circles but also in music, painting, and the theater. Lover's best-known novel, Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life (1842), originated in 1837 as a series of sketches drawn from folktales published in The Bentley Miscellany under the editorship of Charles Dickens. Although the Irish Literary Revival that began in the 1880s and extended into the 1920s dismissed Lover as a mere entertainer who misrepresents Irish peasantry and perpetuates the stage Irishman, Maureen Waters finds Lover's characters "drawn with deft, comic strokes" in a manner reminiscent of Dickens and praises Handy Andy for unmasking political and social attitudes. Lover's grandson, the Irish American composer Victor...