ABSTRACT
Frances Isabel Parnell—Fanny—was born in Avondale House in County Wicklow in 1848. Her father's family were wealthy Anglican landowners, while her American-born mother, Delia, was the grand-daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart, naval hero of the 1812 War. Fanny was born into a world of privilege that typified the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. That world, however, had recently undergone a seismic shift caused by the Great Famine, which had not only removed over two million people through death or emigration, but had (largely due to the Encumbered Estates Acts) changed the structure of landowning. The Parnell family had survived the Famine but, following her father's death, when Fanny was aged 1L, accumulated debts that meant Avondale had to be rented out. It also meant that, during her teenage years, she lived an itinerant life-style. In 1874, she and her mother returned to the family home, 'Ironsides', in Bordentown, New Jersey.
