not conveyed to the members, who re-elected Parnell leader of the Party. After a further historical meeting of the Irish Party MPs early December, Parnell refused to retire, and the Party divided. McCarthy became chairman of the Anti-Parnellite group, or the Irish National Federation and held that post until January 1896; but his nationalism was of a temperate and orderly kind, and though his personal distinction singled him out for the chairmanship during the party dissensions of this period, he was in no active sense the political leader. At the 1892 general election, McCarthy again stood both in North Longford and in Londonderry City. In each seat there was a two-way contest between McCarthy and a Unionist candidate, but the narrow Unionist victory in Londonderry City (by 1986 votes to 1960) was not overturned, and McCarthy sat for North Longford, where he had won over 93% of the votes. He was returned unopposed for North Longford in 1895, and stood down from Parliament at the 1900 general election. Writing It has been claimed that McCarthy's true vocation was as a writer. He published his first novel, Paul Massie: A Romance in 1866, a prelude to several novels that attained a considerable readership: A Fair Saxon (1873), Dear Lady Disdain (1875), Miss Misanthrope (1878), and Donna Quixote (1879). McCarthy's best known work is his History of Our Own Times (vols. i-iv., 1879–1880; vol. v., 1897), which treats of the period between Queen Victoria's accession and her Diamond Jubilee, and ran into several revised editions. In 1882 McCarthy published The Epoch of Reform, 1830-1850. England, he argued, had avoided continental revolution because in a Parliament otherwise incapable of anticipating "the wants and wishes of the country" her statesmen were shrewd enough to defer to "pressure from without". In the case of Ireland, however, he believed their judgement failed them. To "the manner in which the Government resisted Catholic Emancipation, and the grudging way of at last conceding it", he ascribed much of Ireland's subsequent "discontent and disaffection". In 1885, he published England under Gladstone, 1880-1885 . He began a four-volume History of the Four Georges (1884–1901); later completed by his son, Justin Huntly McCarthy. McCarthy traced to the days of Robert Walpole and William Pulteney the origins of the contemporary English political parties which, appealing to prejudices and passions, seek to "manufacture" a public opinion of their own. He also collaborated on