About
About Anna Parnell
‘This is a long overdue biog of an energetic and feisty lady.’ The Sunday Tribune
‘It is fitting that she be remembered for the significant contribution she made to the aspiration for, and the development of, a more just and caring community.’ Mary McAleese – President of Ireland.
About the book
In the late nineteenth century, before women had the vote, a group of respectable ladies operated outside the law to fight for the rights of the landless poor in Ireland. They were feared by both the British government and 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 starting 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.
About the author
Patricia Groves is a successful screenwriter whose Irish Film Board-funded short comedy Rapunzel – The Blonde Years screened at film festivals around the world in 2008 and 2009.
She was born in Bristol and lives in Maynooth, County Kildare. She was inspired to write this book by a fingerprint in the dust of history – a small plaque high on the wall of the AIB Bank in O’Connell Street, Dublin, at the corner of Parnell Square. Standing in the queue in the bank in 2006, she spotted the small, circular plaque simply says ‘Ladies Land League (1881–1882)’. Intrigued, she began researching, and this book is the outcome.
She works in Trocaire, the Irish development agency, as a Campaigns Officer.
