Anna Parnell's Political Journalism


Book Description

Anna Parnell was one of Charles Stewart Parnell's two sisters and like her other sister Fanny was an avid supporter of Home Rule and Land League agitation as well as of her brother's leadership of the Irish Party. Professor Schneller discusses Anna's journalism in Ireland, Britain and the United States and shows the development of her feminism and nationalism at the time of her brothers imprisonment in Kilmainham Prison. The wider context of her writing and the emergence of a genuine women's voice in Irish party politics is also illuminated.




Petticoat Rebellion


Book Description

ONE OF IRELAND'S GREATEST UNSUNG HEROINES In the late nineteenth century, before women even had the vote, a group of respectable ladies operated outside the law to fight for the rights of the poor in Ireland. They were feared by both the British government and the Irish nationalist movement because of their radicalism, and the authorities were reluctant to confront them because they were women. They were the Ladies' Land League, led by Anna Parnell. When Anna and her colleagues started questioning her brother Charles Stewart Parnell's political strategies, they challenged the authority of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the male-run Land League, forcing Charles to reassert control and disband the Ladies' League. In this new study of an often unheralded heroine, Patricia Groves explores the life of Anna Parnell, her relationship with her brother and the forces that drove her to such remarkable feats.




Tale of a Great Sham


Book Description

In late-nineteenth century Ireland, an agrarian revolution was brewing, spearheaded by the 1879 formation of the National Land League, who sought to a pathway for impoverished tenant farmers to own the land they worked. The ideas of the all-male organization were so incendiary for their time that, in 1881, its leaders created the Ladies Land League so "that the women might carry on the work after the men were imprisoned" and appointed Anna Parnell--sister of Land League president Charles Stewart Parnell--as its head. ​ Tale of a Great Sham is Anna Parnell's account of the work of the Ladies Land League, as well as a detailed analysis of what she saw as the shortcomings of the National Land League's executive members. Anna was a committed radical and remained one even after her brother Charles had dropped his most progressive views in favor of what she saw as a watered-down compromise--the so-called "great sham" of the Kilmainham Treaty, which did little to alleviate the injustices suffered by tenant farmers. Featuring an introduction from the renowned feminist historian Margaret Ward, Tales of a Great Sham is a comprehensive study of an important group overlooked for too long in the chronicles of Ireland's radical past.




Irish Culture and “The People”


Book Description

This book argues that populism has been a shaping force in Irish literary culture. Populist moments and movements have compelled authors to reject established forms and invent new ones. Sometimes, as in the middle period of W.B. Yeats's work, populism forces a writer into impossible stances, spurring ever greater rhetorical and poetic creativity. At other times, as in the critiques of Anna Parnell or Myles na gCopaleen, authors penetrate the rhetoric fog of populist discourse and expose the hollowness of its claims. Yet in both politics and culture, populism can be a generative force. Daniel O'Connell, and later the Land League, utilized populist discourse to advance Irish political freedom and expand rights. The most powerful works of Lady Gregory and Ernie O'Malley are their portraits of The People that borrows from the populist vocabulary. While we must be critical of populist discourse, we dismiss it at our loss. This study synthesizes existing scholarship on populism to explore how Irish texts have evoked "The People"—a crucial rhetorical move for populist discourse—and how some writers have critiqued, adopted, and adapted the languages of Irish populisms.




The Irish New Woman


Book Description

The Irish New Woman explores the textual and ideological connections between feminist, nationalist and anti-imperialist writing and political activism at the fin de siècle . This is the first study which foregrounds the Irish and New Woman contexts, effecting a paradigm shift in the critical reception of fin de siècle writers and their work.




Fanny and Anna Parnell


Book Description




Knowing Their Place?


Book Description

Knowing their Place is a comprehensive account of the public, private and intellectual life of Irish women in the Victorian age. In particular, this book looks at the steady progress of girls and women within the education system, their gradual involvement in intellectual life through amateur societies (such as the Royal Dublin Society); their emergence of independent, highly motivated scholarly and philanthropic individuals who operated within local spheres with often very considerable degrees of success and influence.




Charles Stewart Parnell and His Times


Book Description

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) wrote remarkably little about himself, but he has attracted the attention of many writers, politicians, and scholars, both during his lifetime and ever since. His controversial and provocative role in Irish and British affairs had him vilified as a murderer in The Times, and afterwards dramatically vindicated by the Westminster Parliament. It cast him as a romantic hero to the young James Joyce, and a self-serving opportunist to the journalists of the Nation. Parnell has been the subject of court cases, parliamentary enquiries and debates, journalism, plays, poems, literary analysis and historical studies. For the first time all these have been collected, catalogued and cross-referenced in one volume, an invaluable resource for scholars of late nineteenth century Ireland and Britain. Divided into fifteen chapters, including a biographical sketch, the volume contains information on manuscript and archival collections, printed primary sources, Parnell's writing, Parnell's speeches in the House of Commons and outside Parliament, contemporary journalism, contemporary writing, and contemporary illustrations on Irish affairs, and a substantial list of scholarly work, including biographies, books, articles, chapters, and theses. This volume offers readers a clear record of the substantial material already available on Parnell, and in doing so offers resources to future research in this area.




Gender and History


Book Description

This book provides an overview of Irish gender history from the end of the Great Famine in 1852 until the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922. It builds on the work that scholars of women’s history pioneered and brings together internationally regarded experts to offer a synthesis of the current historiography and existing debates within the field. The authors place emphasis on highlighting new and exciting sources, methodologies, and suggested areas for future research. They address a variety of critical themes such as the family, reproduction and sexuality, the medical and prison systems, masculinities and femininities, institutions, charity, the missions, migration, ‘elite women’, and the involvement of women in the Irish nationalist/revolutionary period. Envisioned to be both thematic and chronological, the book provides insight into the comparative, transnational, and connected histories of Ireland, India, and the British empire. An important contribution to the study of Irish gender history, the volume offers opportunities for students and researchers to learn from the methods and historiography of Irish studies. It will be useful for scholars and teachers of history, gender studies, colonialism, post-colonialism, European history, Irish history, Irish studies, and political history. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.




The Famine Diaspora and Irish American Women's Writing


Book Description

The Famine Diaspora and Irish American Women’s Writing considers the works of eleven North American female authors who wrote for or descended from the Irish Famine generation: Anna Dorsey, Christine Faber, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Mother Jones, Kate Kennedy, Margaret Dixon McDougall, Mary Meaney, Alice Nolan, Fanny Parnell, Mary Anne Sadlier, and Elizabeth Hely Walshe. This collection examines the ways the writings of these women contributed significantly to the construction of Irish North-American identities, and played a crucial role in the dissemination of Famine memories transgenerationally as well as transnationally. The included annotated excerpts from these women writers’ works and the accompanying essays by prominent international scholars offer insights on the sociopolitical position of the Irish in North America, their connections with the homeland, women’s activities in transnational (often Catholic) publishing networks and women writers’ mediation of Ireland’s cultural heritage. Furthermore, the volume illustrates the generic variety of Irish American women’s writing of the Famine generation, which comprises political treatises, novels, short stories and poetry, and bears witness to these female authors’ profound engagement with political and social issues, such as the conditions of the poor and woman’s vote.