Martin 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.