Edith Somerville
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, 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
's diary and letters is still almost unexamined.
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Biography
Somerville and Ross was a joint pseudonym often used to refer to the work of
and her second cousin Violet Martin—or Martin Ross. Both families were opposed to the women's real names appearing on their books, which were merchandise and therefore bore the stigma of trade.