Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Edith Somerville
-
Standard Name: Somerville, Edith
Birth Name: Edith Anne Œnone Somerville
Pseudonym: Geilles Herring
Pseudonym: Viva Graham
Pseudonym: E. Œ. Somerville
Pseudonym: Somerville and Ross
ES
, who published from 1885, is known from the Somerville and Ross partnership which produced at least one important novel and a collection of classic comic stories (set in the west of Ireland and centred on fox-hunting), as well as other endearing Irish sketches and travel writings. She continued to write in these genres, mostly story and memoir, after Ross's death (which she saw as interrupting but not ending their collaboration). The later works (the last appeared in 1949) are suffused with nostalgia, and very largely dominated by the need to make money, to keep going an estate which was no longer financially viable. The massive archive of ES
's diary and letters is still almost unexamined.
Edith Somerville
and MR
published, with Ward and Downey
, their most popular novel, The Real Charlotte.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
98, 103
Publishing
Martin Ross
Edith Somerville
, rising ninety, received the news that Oxford University Press
was reprinting The Real Charlotte (by herself and MR
) in the World's Classics series.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
275
Material Conditions of Writing
Martin Ross
MR
and Edith Somerville
, staying at Etaples in France, began work on the stories which became Some Experiences of an Irish R. M.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
123
Family and Intimate relationships
Martin Ross
Violet Martin (later MR
) met her second cousin Edith Somerville
for the first time, while staying in the village of Castletownshend, in Cork.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
39, 25-8
Cronin, John. Somerville and Ross. Bucknell University Press.
14
Textual Production
Martin Ross
Edith Somerville
and MR
published the book for which they were and are most famous: Some Experiences of an Irish R. M., illustrated by Somerville herself.
Cummins, Geraldine. Dr. E. Œ. Somerville: A Biography. Andrew Dakers.
253-4
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
126
Intertextuality and Influence
Kate O'Brien
Lorna Reynolds notes a parallel between the KOB
of this novel, on the one hand, and Somerville
and Ross
, on the other. Like her very different predecessors in the west-of-Ireland novel, O'Brien describes landscape...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Russell Mitford
Our Village is often said to have inaugurated its genre of small-scale, local-colour sketch writing, but (apart from Washington Irving
's Geoffrey Crayon's Sketch Book, 1819) it owes an obvious debt to the work...
Intertextuality and Influence
Molly Keane
The stories, told through the eyes of an Englishman dazzled by Ireland, concern a family in a big-house: an aristocratic father, domineering and hiding his love; a brother and sister whose lives are wrapped...
Textual Production
Molly Keane
MK
wrote a foreword for Gifford Lewis
's selection from the letters of Somerville
and Ross
, published in 1989.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production
Elizabeth Jane Howard
She was invited to do a script for an Irish film by Jonathan Cavendish
about Edith Somerville
and Martin Ross
, but when she looked into their lives she thought they lacked the dramatic structure...
Bernard Shaw
saw Lady Gregory as a born playwright . . . . doomed from the cradle to write for the stage, to break through every social obstacle to get to the stage, to refuse...
Textual Production
Maureen Duffy
One Goodnight, the first of MD
's two radio plays about the Irish writers Edith Somerville
and Martin Ross
, aired on the BBC
.
“The Knitting Circle”. London South Bank University: Lesbian and Gay Staff Association.
Textual Features
B. M. Croker
Some chapter titles (Clancy's Colt, Foxy Joe Tells Tales) suggest a work by Somerville
and Ross
, and so does the opening description of Ballingoole, which used to enjoy the best and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Bowen
The authors whom EB
wrote of for the British Council in English Novelists are (as the commission required) canonical and mostly male. She was deeply influenced by Virginia Woolf
, and wrote after Woolf's death...
