Fannie Gallaher

Francesca (Fannie) Mary Gallaher Sydney Starr and F. M. Gallaher (30 May 1854 – 22 December 1935) was an Irish writer, novelist and teacher.

Early life Gallaher was born in Cork in 1854, but the family soon moved to Dublin where she grew up. Her grandfather was ventriloquist Patrick Gallaher. She had two brothers, Fred (b1853) and Joseph (b1855) both of whom were journalists on the Freeman's Journal, with Joseph being its editor. Joseph Gallaher had two sons, Gerald (b1889) and Brendan (b1891) who were childhood contemporaries and neighbours of James Joyce.

Career

Teaching Gallaher attended Alexandra College, Dublin, and she after graduating was employed there as a teacher.

Writing Gallaher was also a writer. In 1880 her novel Katty the Flash: a mould of Dublin mud, centred on an impoverished woman who has a non-marital baby, was published.

Katty the Flash was successful and it was republished in the New York Sun and the Temple Bar magazine. Temple Bar attributed it to "Miss Gallaher", but the New York Sun was criticised by the Weekly Irish Times for allowing it to be amended and published under the name

Gallaher also wrote stories for children that were published in the 1880s. She wrote books on the teaching of domestic science that were used in schools in Northern Ireland and were considered essential for new families by The Dublin Journal of Medical Science.

Personal secretary In 1884 she was employed as personal private secretary to Adeline Marie Russell. Duchess of Bedford and a campaigner for penal reform. Gallaher continued in this job until 1920 when Russell died and left her with an annuity of £400 per year. Fannie's funeral service took place at the Church of Our Lady, Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire. She was interred in the churchyard at nearby Chenies, next to Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, her employer of thirty-one years.

An anthology notes that Gallaher and Laffan's works described Irish urban settings in a new way that was continued by James Joyce and James Stephens.