Mentally disabled from birth, hidden from the public eye in a series of boarding schools and subjected to a botched lobotomy at age 23 by her Machiavellian father who was weary of her burgeoning sexuality, Rosemary Kennedy has long been an enigma.

Now, two news books - Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff's The Missing Kennedy and Kate Clifford Larson's Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter – shine a spotlight on a tragic life lived in the shadows.

The latest issue of People Magazine, currently out on newsstands, contains excerpts from both books as part of the cover story about Rosemary Kennedy.

Rosemary Kennedy passed away from natural causes January 7, 2005, aged 86, at St Coletta, a Catholic institution for the disabled in Jefferson, Wisconsin, which had been her home for more than five decades.

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Truth revealed: Two news books - Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff's The Missing Kennedy (left) and Kate Clifford Larson's Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (right) – shine a spotlight on Rosemary Kennedy's fate

Dynasty: Rosemary Kennedy, sitting second from right, was born with mental disabilities and underwent a lobotomy aged 23 before vanishing into obscurity. She is pictured in the 1930s with her family, L-R, Joseph Jr, Robert, Edward, John, Joseph Sr, Rose, Eunice, Jean, Patricia, Rosemary and Kathleen

Based on Larson's new historical sources and on information obtained by Koehler-Pentacoff from her aunt, who was a nun at St Coletta during Rosemary’s extended stay there, the two biographies paint the most complete portrait of the ill-fated Kennedy daughter.

On September 13, 1918, Rose Kennedy went into labor at the family's home in Brookline, Massachusetts, with only a nurse present to assist her.

An obstetrician was called to supervise the delivery, but he was running late, and so the nurse made the decision to delay the birth by forcing Mrs Kennedy to keep her legs tightly together and stop pushing.

Having failed that, the nurse then reached into the birth canal and held the baby head's inside for two long hours until the doctor finally arrived, according to the cited excerpts.

Manually delaying labor by preventing the mother to push, and then forcibly keeping the child in the birth canal, likely deprived Rosemary of oxygen and left her with possible brain damage.

Growing up, it became clear to her parents that Rosemary was lagging in her development behind other children her age.

In her memoir published in 1974, Rose Kennedy wrote that her daughter crawled, stood, walked and uttered her first words late.

Rosemary, pictured left with her father and siblings Joseph, Teddy, and Eunice in 1938 in London, and right with brother John and sister Jean, was welcomed into the world in 1918 after a difficult birth in which she likely sustained brain damage after having been deprived of oxygen

Stepping out: Rosemary, then 19, is pictured right with her mother Rose and sister Kathleen in May 1938, when they were presented at Court. She underwent the botched lobotomy three years later

Harsh words: During her time in London with her ambassador father (left and right), Rosemary put on some weight, which Mr Kennedy did not approve of, calling her 'altogether too fat'

As time went by, Rosemary was having trouble performing simple tasks like writing, playing sports and steering a sled. She was also shier and clumsier than her brothers and sisters.

When Rosemary reached school age, her mother sought the advice of experts and was told her daughter was 'retarded’ - a catch-all term erroneously used for many years to describe an array of mental disabilities.

The Kennedys tried their hardest to conceal her condition, but as she matured, it was getting increasingly difficult.

Sister Eunice Kennedy recalled years later witnessing what she believed to be seizures in Rosemary, who was also prone to temper tantrums.

At age 11, Joseph and Rose shipped Rosemary off to the first in a series of boarding schools for special-needs children, but she never went beyond the third or fourth grade in her studies.

Rosemary would write heart-breaking letters to her father thanking him for coming to see her and begging him to visit her more often because she gets 'very lonesome everyday.'

When Rosemary was 19 years old, her father was appointed the US ambassador to Great Britain .

The large Kennedy clan decamped to London, and Rosemary flourished at a local convent school, but she began putting on weight, which was unacceptable to her strict father.

As Rosemary, pictured right next to sister Eunice in 1938, entered adulthood, her parents were having increasingly hard time controlling her and keeping away suitors

Out of control: Upon her return to the stay, the attractive young woman, seen here left next to sister Jean, would often run away from her Washington DC boarding school and spent her nights wandering the city

The ambassador wrote to his daughter's school in regards to Rosemary’s 'weight problem,' saying: 'she is getting all together too fat and I told her in no uncertain terms.'

As Rosemary reached her early 20s, she blossomed into an attractive and sexually appealing young woman whom her concerned parents now deemed unmanageable.

Rose Kennedy's niece Ann Gargan told famed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for her 1987 book The Fitzgeralds and The Kennedys how upon the family's return to the states at the outbreak of World War II, Rosemary would take off from her Washington DC boarding school and wander the city at night.

By that time, Joseph Kennedy was busy laying the groundwork for his sons' political careers and feared that his out-of-control daughter could cause significant damage to the family name by becoming pregnant.

Seeking to rein her in, Kennedy spoke to his wife about an experimental brain surgery known as a lobotomy.

Their daughter Kathleen looked into the controversial procedure at her mother's request and concluded: 'It's nothing we want for Rosie.'

In 1941, Joseph Kennedy scheduled a lobotomy surgery for his daughter Rosemary (seen here demonstrating a visual aid for the deaf) without consulting his family

But the domineering Kennedy patriarch ignored his daughter’s advice and quickly scheduled the procedure without consulting anyone in his family, including his wife.

In his 2014 book Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, Timothy Shriver, Rosemary's nephew and the chairman of the Special Olympics, described the 'chilling' procedure, which involved surgeons cutting into the brain while the patient was still conscious and only stopping when the patient could no longer communicate.

'The outcome, in Rosemary's case, was devastating,' Shriver wrote.

She could no longer speak, her mobility was damaged and 'she lost her independence for the rest of her life,' he wrote.

Afterwards, a guilt-ridden Joseph Kennedy refused to visit her. His wife Rose would later claim that her husband kept her in the dark about their daughter's lobotomy for 20 years.

'The code of secrecy kicked in and Rosemary disappeared,' Shriver wrote.

After Joseph Kennedy's stroke in 1961, his wife finally traveled to Wisconsin to visit her daughter for the first time since the surgery. At the sight of her mother, Rosemary, who was being escorted by two nuns, broke into a sprint and lunged at the elderly woman, beating her chest and screaming at her.

New home: After the surgery, Rosemary was shipped off to St Colette in Jefferson, Wisconsin (left and right), where she died of natural causes in 2007

Rosemary's siblings apparently knew nothing of her true fate. Some believed that seeking privacy, she had moved to the Midwest and worked as a teacher at a school for handicapped children.

Her situation markedly improved in the 1970s as relatives began invite her home for short visits.

Mr Shriver, Rosemary's nephew, recalled that although her language skills were extremely limited, she took pleasure in taking strolls, swimming and playing cards. She also enjoying getting compliments on her looks.

Rose Kennedy kept mum about her daughter's lobotomy until her death in 1995, even as she gave speeches about mental retardation.

Speaking to her biographer Robert Coughlin in 1972, she said that Rosemary's mind 'is gone completely' because of 'an accident.'