Anna Parnell (1852–1911)

Anna Parnell was born into an Irish landowning family. Her older brother was Charles Stewart Parnell. Anna and their other sister, Fanny Parnell, who grew up to be a poet, also became Irish nationalists. After the death of their father, they lived in Dublin, Paris, London, and the USA, with their American-born mother. They got experience fundraising for famine victims in Ireland, writing articles for journals, and obtaining publicity for their cause. They co-founded the ladies' auxiliary of the Irish Land League when its male leaders were imprisoned in 1881. They raised funds for the Ladies' Land League and urged Irish women to withhold rents from landlords, hold boycotts, and resist evictions. By early 1882, they had established 500 branches of the Ladies' Land League, with thousands of members and considerable publicity. Anna Parnell quarreled with her brother over politics, and went to live in Cornwall, England, under an assumed name. In 1904, she wrote an angry account of her Land League experiences called Tale of a Great Sham; unable to find a publisher, it did not appear in print until 1986. Anna, who never married, drowned in a swimming accident at Ilfracombe in 1911.