Born in Dublin in 1917, the daughter of the Irish minister to the US, Maeve Brennan moved to Washington D.C. in 1934. She settled in Manhattan and joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1949, where she contributed numerous articles and reviews until her retirement in 1973. Her ‘Talk of the Town’ sketches from the New Yorker were collected in The Longwinded Lady (1969). She then went on to publish In and Out of Never-Never Land (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969); Christmas Eve (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974); and The Springs of Affection (Boston & New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997). She died in New York in 1993. The Visitor was first reissued by New Island in 2001.