Kitty O'Shea : Life of Katharine Parnell (New ed)

Katharine Parnell is still best remembered as Kitty O'Shea, the married woman who ensnared Charles Stewart Parnell (the uncrowned King of Ireland), destroyed his career, hastened his death and set back the cause of Irish independence for a generation.

This biography discovers the real woman behind the Kitty O'Shea legend.

Katharine Parnell is revealed to have been a woman of unshakeable faith and courage throughout every ordeal: her marriage to Willie O'Shea, a drinker and a gambler; the political machinations that dogged her relationship with Parnell; the public denouncement that followed its exposure.

She knew little of Ireland and its politics, but she took on, without realizing the ferocity of her antagonists, the Irish nation, the British Establishment, the Catholic Church, the Irish Parliamentary Party, her family, her husband and her children.