Anna Kelly

Anna Kelly (8 January 1891 – 14 June 1958) was an Irish journalist and the first women's page editor in Ireland. Early life Anna Kelly was born Annie Christina Fitzsimmons in Ballysadare, County Sligo on 8 January 1891. She was one of the four children of James Fitzsimmons, RIC constable and later a farmer, and Mary Fitzsimmons (née McDonald). She had two brothers and one sister. Later in life both Kelly and her brothers changed the spelling of their surname to Fitzsimons. Kelly attended a convent school before moving to Dublin around 1910 to take up temporary secretarial jobs with an employment agency. Career One of her first jobs was as a typist and stenographer to George Moore, who raised her wages to £2 a week from the 10s. paid by the agency. Through Moore she was introduced to a number of prominent figures in the Irish literary revival, and also worked for the publishing house, Maunsel. Despite her family's disapproval, Kelly was a member of Cumann na mBan, serving in the GPO in the Easter Rising. She joined the office staff of Sinn Féin in their headquarters at 6 Harcourt Street, Dublin in 1917. There, she worked as secretary and general assistant to Patrick O'Keeffe, the party's general secretary. In this role she was the minute taker at numerous meetings including the party's central council. For the inaugural sitting of the first Dáil Éireann on 21 January 1919, she prepared notes. She later served as a secretary to Michael Collins, preparing briefings for foreign correspondents, typed and mimeographed the news sheet of the Dáil department of publicity, and assisting in the collating and composing Irish Bulletin from 1919 to 1921. She did all of this during the dangerous and underground times of the Irish War of Independence. Throughout this time she was known as "Miss Fitz", retaining the lifelong nicknames of "Fitz" and "Fitzie". During the Irish Civil War she worked on the Republican War News, an anti-treaty publication, which led to her arrest by Free State authorities in late 1922. She was imprisoned in Mountjoy, then Kilmainham where she went on hunger strike, and then the North Dublin Union from which she escaped with a number of fellow female prisoners, but was rearrested in May 1923. After the ceasefire, she was released. Kelly had been working as a freelance journalist throughout the 1920s. When The Irish Press was launched in 1931, Kelly was on the staff as the first women's page editor in Ireland.