Charlotte Elizabeth McManus (about 1850â 5 October 1944) was an Irish nationalist, historian and novelist. Her family name sometimes appears as MacManus in sources. She was known as Lil and Lottie, and published as L. McManus.
McManus was born in Kiltimagh (some sources give Castlebar), County Mayo, the daughter of James McManus and Charlotte Elvira McManus. McManus was educated at home and in Torquay. Her brother Leonard Strong McManus was a physician, and her sister Caroline married Sir Edwin Cooper Perry, a physician and medical educator. Hospital matron Emily MacManus was her niece, and writer Dermot MacManus was a nephew.
In midlife, McManus became ardent nationalist and a Gaelic League worker in Kiltimagh, County Mayo. Due to her work it is believed up to 7000 people attended a nationalist meeting in the area in 1909. She was on the anti-Treaty side of the Civil War in Ireland. She wrote for Penny Pamphlets, published in the Educational Company of Ireland series, and wrote articles for the Irish Independent. Her novel The Professor in Erin (1918) was serialized in the Sinn Féin newspaper, and uses an alternate world scenario to depict "such an Ireland as might have existed had the battle of Kinsale resulted differently, and if Ireland had not been subjected to the plantations that followed that battle". She also contributed chapters to the Seumas MacManus book The Story of the Irish Race (1921).
McManus died in Kiltimagh in 1944, in her nineties. In 1954 her novel Nuala was translated into Irish by Gearoid Mac Spealáin.