Parnell: A Memoir Edward Byrne, Frank Callanan (ed) €15.00 ISBN: 0 946640 82 3 Format: Size: Publication Date: 1991 Physical Copy (supplied by Lilliput Press) Add to Basket View Shopping Basket

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91), the greatest Irish politican 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 of British politics. Victim of the Nonconformist Consience 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 hte mask of resolve.

Frank Callanan, barrister and writer, introduces this 'haunting text of the Parnell muth', outlining Byrne's career and the role of the press in the emergence of Parnell as a modern political celebrity. The work is augmented by iconography from newspapers and periodicals of the time.