PARNELLITES

[Fanny Parnell [Frances Isabel Parnell], sister of the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell.] Contemporary manuscript copy of her poem ?Post Mortem? (?Shall mine eyes behold thy glory, O my country??).

Author: 
Fanny Parnell [Frances Isabel Parnell] (1848-1882), sister of the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell
Publication details: 
Undated, but on paper with watermark ?J Dollard / IRISH MANUFACTURE?, hence late Victorian or Edwardian, as Dollard was a printer and stationer in Dublin during that period. (Dating supported by provenance.)
Upon request

See her entry and her brother?s in the Oxford DNB. The item is from the collection of Irish nationalist autographs assembled by Miss Burgess of Norfolk in the 1890s, who has endorsed one leaf in her distinctive hand ? ?Post Mortem? / By Fanny Parnell?. Undated. 3pp, 4to. On two leaves of paper with Dollard watermark. Poem of twenty-eight lines, in seven stanzas, titled ?Post Mortem?. From a comparison with a letter in the National Library of Ireland certainly not in Fanny Parnell?s hand. A fair copy, with one mistake (corrected) confirming transcription: ?loveliness? for ?loneliness?.

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[Parnell's 'bodyguard and aide-de-camp': Henry Harrison MP MC, member of the Irish Parliamentary Party.] Autograph Letter Signed, written within months of the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, on behalf of his widow Katharine ('Kitty O'Shea').

Author: 
Henry Harrison (1867-1954), close confidant of Charles Stewart Parnell and his wife Katharine (?Kitty O?Shea?), Irish Parliamentary Party MP in British House of Commons, decorated British Army captain
Publication details: 
19 December 1891; 10 Walsingham Terrace, West Brighton.
£100.00

Parnell had died around ten weeks before, on 6 October 1891. See Harrison's entry in the Oxford DNB: 'After the party broke in two in December 1890, Harrison campaigned with his chief in Ireland, constituting himself a bodyguard and aide-de-camp. After Parnell's death in October 1891 Harrison, young though he was, hastened to Brighton to put his services at the disposal of Parnell's widow. It was then that he heard from her a very different account of the circumstances surrounding her divorce from that given in court.

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