Life
1852-1911 [Catherine Maria Anna Mercer]; b. Avondale, Co. Wicklow, 13
May; d. 20 Sept., Ilfracombe, Devon; 10th of 11 children to John Henry
Parnell (d.1859) and Delia Tudor Parnell, his American wife; s. to Charles
Stewart Parnell; organised Ladies’ Land League, 1881; resisted attempts
by Chief Sec. W. E. Foster to suppress the League under legislation addressed
to prostitution; distributed £60,000 in relief; disbanded at request of
Charles Stewart Parnell, who distrusted her politically; Old Tales
and New, in verse4 (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Co. 1905); also wrote
The Tale of a Great Sham, published in 1986, ed. Dana Hearne (see
als Maeve Cavanagh, supra); drowned at Ilfracombe under circumstances suggesting
suicide, 20 Sept. [No DNB entry.] DIB DIH [FDA]
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Works
Beverly Schneller, Anna Parnell's Political Journalism [Irish Research Ser. No. 22] (MD: Academic Press LLC 2005), 312pp.
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Criticism
Jane McL. Côté, Fanny & Anna Parnell, Ireland’s
Patriot Sisters (London: Macmillan 1991), xix, 331pp.
J. TeBrake, ‘Irish peasant women in revolt: the Land League years’, in Irish Historical Studies 28 (1992), pp.63-80.
Niamh O’Sullivan, ‘The Iron Cage of Femininity:Visual Representation of Women in the 1880s Land Agitation’, in Tadhg Foley and Seán Ryder, Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1998), p.181-96.
Jane Côté & Dana Hearne, ‘Anna Parnell’, in Mary
Cullen and Mary Luddy, eds., Women, Power and Consciousness in Nineteenth
Century Ireland (Dublin: Attic Press 1995), pp. 271-6.
T. W. Moody, ‘Anna Parnell and the Land League’, Hermathena CXVII (Summer 1974), pp.5-17.
R. F. Foster, Paddy and Mr Punch, 1993, p.44.
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field
Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3,, fnd. Ladies’ Land League 1881], 416n; Katharine
Tynan, ‘I remember so strongly the extraordinarily compelling force
of her personality..,’ (Twenty-Five Years, 1913), 418 [with
bio-note, 1852-1911; first woman agitator of importance in mod. Irish
history; fnd. LLL on promptings of sister Frances Parnell; addressed it
s first public meeting, Claremorris, Co Mayo, 31 Jan 1881; see A. Parnell,
The Tale of a Great Sham, ed. D.Hearn (Arlen 1986). [Anna turned
against Parnell after he disbanded the LLL on his release from prison.]
See also notices in Irish Booklover.
Circumstances of death: After the death of Fanny, 18 July 1882, she withdrew from public life except
for occasional letters to the press; in 1908 she took a part in the campaign
at which C. J. Dolan contested a seat in North Leitrim for Sinn Féin;
in 1909 she was moving about in England as Cerisa Palmer; drown at the Tunnels bathing spot in
Ilfacrombe, N. Devon, on 20 Sept.
1911; though a good swimmer she ‘never spoke or called
out’, according to an attendant who tried to rescue her, as reported
in obit., Freeman’s Journal, 25 Sept. 1911, and in Katherine
O’Shea, Charles Stewart Parnell, His Love Story and Political
Life (London 1914), I, 260-61 [See Moody, op. cit., infra, p.9].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)