Fanny Parnell

Fanny Parnell born Frances Isabelle Parnell (4 September 1848 – 20 July 1882) was an Irish poet, Irish Nationalist, and the sister of Charles Stewart Parnell, an important figure in nineteenth century Ireland.

Fanny Parnell was born on 4 September 1848 in Avondale, County Wicklow, Ireland into a wealthy Protestant background. She was the eighth child out of eleven and fourth daughter born to John Henry Parnell, a landowner and the grandson of the last Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, and Delia Tudor Stewart Parnell, an Irish-American and the daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart (1778–1869) of the US Navy. Fanny's mother hated British rule in Ireland, a view presented through her children's works. Fanny was an intelligent girl and before she was through her teen years she had studied mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy, and she could speak and write fluently in almost all the major European languages. She also had talents in music and painting and drawing in oil and water colours. Fanny's parents separated when she was young, and soon after her father died in July 1859 at the age of forty eight, she and her mother moved to Dalkey. A year later they moved to Dublin, and in 1865 they moved to Paris where Fanny studied art and wrote poetry. In 1874 they moved to Bordentown, New Jersey in America.

Fanny was known as the Patriot Poet. She showed interest in Irish politics and most of her poetry was about Irish nationalism. While she was living in Dublin in 1864, she began publishing her poetry under the pseudonym Aleria in The Irish People which was the newspaper of the Fenian Brotherhood. Most of her work was published in The Boston Pilot which was the best known Irish newspaper in America during the nineteenth century. Two of her most widely published works were The Hovels of Ireland, a pamphlet, and Land League Songs, a collection of poems. Her best known poem is Hold the Harvest, and Michael Davitt referred to it as the “Marseillaise of the Irish peasant."

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