[3] As an adolescent, Fitzgerald started to develop Anglo-Catholic views such as going to confession, which was very unusual for Anglicans, to Edward Bouverie Pusey.
Her family tried to dissuade her, but she was fascinated by John Henry Newman 's Apologia pro vita sua, which she purchased in secret.
She visited the University Church in St Stephen's Green to pray, and wished to convert to Catholicism but hesitated in view of her family's opposition.
Newman visited with the Fitzgeralds in their London home while he was in the city on 22 February 1876, when he charmed her mother and sister.
(1875), appeared simply as by "the author of Only three weeks" and had some exploration of Home Rule in Ireland as imagined by Issac Butt.
[1][4] As Newman's influence on Fitzgerald waned as he suffered with ill-health, this left her able to vent her hostilities in particular towards Home Rule and the Land League.
In her last book she appears to be in favour of women's suffrage, and later stated those views again in a June 1917 letter to the Cork Examiner.