My Darling Danny: Letters from Mary O'Connell to Her Son Daniel, 1830-1832

On May 9, 1830, fourteen year-old Daniel O'Connell Jr., son of the "Liberator," left his comfortable home in Dublin to attend the Jesuit college at Clongowes Wood in County Kildare. Thus began a three-year correspondence between Danny Jr. and his mother, Mary O'Connell. Bursting with love and affection, illness and death, politics and scandal, these letters allow a brief glimpse at the relationship between mother and son in nineteenth-century Ireland. In addition, this collection documents a portion of an important juncture in the political career of Danny's father Daniel O'Connell. Returned for Clare in the 1828 by-election, the "Liberator" took his seat in 1830 as the first Catholic Member of Parliament, and for the next several years focused his attention on the parliamentary business carried out in London. This collection of letters between mother and son is doubly valuable, because it not only offers insights into both the ordinary social history of nineteenth-century Ireland, but into the extraordinary and exciting political history of parliamentary politics and of Daniel O'Connell as well.