Parnell: A Memoir

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91), the greatest Irish politician of the late nineteenth century, forfeited leadership of the Irish Party in Westminster because of a divorce scandal, after a decade in which he had placed the Irish Question at the centre of British politics. Victim of the Nonconformist Conscience and Catholic rectitude, he fought fiercely but died with a year, aged forty-five. In this little-known, brilliant memoir of 1898, former Freeman’s Journal editor Edward Byrne sketches the Irish leader in his later years, between the ordeal and triumph of the Parnell Commission, and his fall. He records Parnell’s private assessment of men and affairs, and conveys the charm behind the mask of resolve.