Ireland's Misfortune: The Turbulent Life of Kitty O'Shea

Ireland's Misfortune: The Turbulent Life of Kitty O'Shea

by ElisabethKehoe (Author)

Synopsis

At the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Stewart Parnell, MP, was the only man who both the English government and Irish radicals believed could secure Home Rule for Ireland. But when Parnell met and fell in love with Katie O'Shea, a married woman, Parnell's life - and Ireland's history - would change for ever. When Parnell was named as co-respondent in Katie's divorce and revealed as the father of three of Katie's children their affair triggered the most notorious scandal of the Victorian era.

Elisabeth Kehoe's vivid biography introduces us to a woman entirely unrecognisable as the home-wrecker and historical catastrophe of subsequent myth. From this book emerges, for the first time, the real Katie O'Shea: a gifted woman who influenced political policy with an acuity and sensitivity sorely lacking in her lover.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 608
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 01 Mar 2009

ISBN 10: 1843544873
ISBN 13: 9781843544876
Book Overview: As dramatic as a good novel, this is the first intimate biography of Katie 'Kitty' O'Shea, the woman whose scandalous love affair with the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell altered the course of Irish history.

Media Reviews
Thoroughly researched and filled with a wealth of social detail. -- John Campbell * Independent *
Excellent... I suspect this book tells us all we can ever know about Charles Parnell and Katharine or Katie O'Shea. -- Garret FitzGerald * Guardian *
A scholarly, painstakingly researched work... [Kehoe gives us] an up-close and personal seat in the claustrophobic rooms of the many mansions that Katie occupied during her strange married life. -- Helen Rock * Sunday Tribune *
Fascinating... Enthralling... Far from being a saucy sexpot Mrs O'Shea was a strong-minded, cultivated and self-assured Victorian matron with whom the otherwise frighteningly icy Parnell was utterly smitten. -- Mary Kenny * Literary Review *
Author Bio
Elisabeth Kehoe took her doctorate in history at the School of Advanced Study of the University of London, where she now teaches. Her first book, Fortune's Daughters: The Extravagant Lives of the Jerome Sisters, was published by Atlantic Books in 2004.