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.
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...
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...
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.
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
Reception
Augusta Gregory
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
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...
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.
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...
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...
Textual Production
Edith Somerville
ES
published a new novel, An Enthusiast, with a different arrangement of names, as (in all but the first printing) by herself in collaboration with
Cummins, Geraldine. Dr. E. Œ. Somerville: A Biography. Andrew Dakers.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
200
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...
Textual Production
Edith Somerville
ES
published Wheel-Tracks (which she described as autobiographical),
Cummins, Geraldine. Dr. E. Œ. Somerville: A Biography. Andrew Dakers.
263
as by both herself and Martin Ross
, illustrated with her drawings and photographs.