Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Martin Ross
-
Standard Name: Ross, Martin
Birth Name: Violet Florence Martin
Pseudonym: Martin Ross
Pseudonym: Somerville and Ross
It is widely suspected that MR
may have been the dominant partner, the chief creative spirit, in the partnership of Somerville
and Ross which occupied the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (though the opposite view has also been argued). Their most memorable works—an 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—were completed before her death, and Somerville's publications after Ross died are permeated with an elegiac tone. They themselves poured scorn on their public's desire to teize apart the individual strands in their collaboration.
Stone, Marjorie, and Judith Thompson. Literary couplings: writing couples, collaborators, and the construction of authorship. University of Wisconsin Press.
ES
published in the USA, in two separate editions, The States through Irish Eyes, with her own name, followed by Joint-Author with Martin Ross
Cummins, Geraldine. Dr. E. Œ. Somerville: A Biography. Andrew Dakers.
264
of a list of earlier works.
Cummins, Geraldine. Dr. E. Œ. Somerville: A Biography. Andrew Dakers.
264-5
Publishing
Edith Somerville
ES
published, as by herself and Martin Ross
(who was now more than ten years dead), and with her own illustrations, The Sweet Cry of Hounds, another volume of essays or reminiscences.
ES
published, as another collaboration with Martin Ross
, with her own illustrations, Notions in Garrison.
The title, a quotation from the seventeenth-century writer Thomas Fuller
, depends on a military metaphor: from these...
Publishing
Edith Somerville
ES
published another book without the collaboration of Martin Ross
: The Story of the Discontented Little Elephant. Told in Pictures and Rhyme, for children.
Cummins, Geraldine. Dr. E. Œ. Somerville: A Biography. Andrew Dakers.
258
politics
Edith Somerville
ES
and Martin Ross
campaigned for women's suffrage in Ireland, but they did not support the militancy and the anti-Home-Rule stance of English suffragists.
Occupation
Constance Smedley
Since the Langham Place Group
had provided a social space for women in 1860, several organizations had already challenged the flourishing institution of men's clubs. The Lyceum Club
came on the scene at a time...
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...
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
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
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...
Friends, Associates
Katherine Cecil Thurston
Through these social engagements, KCT
came into contact with several significant figures of the day. At a dinner given by Colonel George Harvey
, for instance, she probably met Mr
and Mrs Winston Churchill
...
Friends, Associates
Edith Somerville
ES
began a series of attempts to get Martin Ross
to manifest herself at spiritualist seances: nothing definite happened.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
221
Friends, Associates
Augusta Gregory
One of AG
's friends at this time was Katherine Martin
of Ross, whose elder sister, Violet Martin (known as Martin Ross)
, later became part of a famous writing duo with her cousin Edith Somerville
Family and Intimate relationships
Edith Somerville
One of ES
's great-grandfathers, whom she shared with her collaborator Ross
, was Charles Kendal Bushe
, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
28
Family and Intimate relationships
Edith Somerville
Within a few months Violet became a replacement for the lost Ethel Coghill. It was ES
who selected the name Martin Ross for her cousin, apparently to avoid confusion with another Violet in the family...
