Better known for their tales of an Irish R. M. (resident magistrate), which were adapted into a successful TV series starring Peter Bowles, Somerville and Ross outraged their respective families – who referred to them ‘the Shockers’ – by combining travel writing with the fight for Women’s Suffrage. The contrast between the emancipated pair and the largely unreconstructed characters they encounter on their travels only serves to heighten the charm of an already indelibly charming book. ABOU...

The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them are Somerville & Ross - the writing pseudonym for Edith Somerville & Violet Florence Martin Sidney Benson Thorp.

This novel, according to Somerville, "concerns the history of one of those minor dynasties that, in Ireland, have risen, and rules, and rioted, and crashed in ruins." "Somerville and Ross know their world as well as Jane Austen knew hers."-John Bayley.

The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them are Somerville & Ross - the writing pseudonym for Edith Somerville & Violet Florence Martin Sidney Benson Thorp.

A masterpiece of Irish literature of the Victorian Age, The Real Charlotte draws characters from the worlds of Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the native Irish peasantry. “Delightful.”-The Guardian.

BBC productions of the best-known works of Somerville and Ross, plus a docudrama about their remarkable literary partnershipEdith Œnone Somerville and 'Martin Ross' (the pen name of Violet Florence Martin) were cousins, born into the Irish landed gentry in the mid-19th century. They began writing books together as a joke, but quickly developed into serious artists, producing several works now recognised as classics such as The Real Charlotte and Some E...

*** Original and Unabridged Content. Made available by CLASSIC COLLECTION 600.***Synopsis:This is the first of three novels which Edith Somerville and her cousin Violet Martin wrote about the English Major Sinclair Yates who leaves the army to take up a position of Resident Magistrate in the West of Ireland in about 1895. The tales tell in a humorous way of his struggles with a new job, new culture, and with his landlord and neighbour Mr. ‘Flurry’ Knox whose prime, if not o...

I have many people to thank, for many things, and I have an explanation to make, but the thanks must come first. I offer my most sincere gratitude to Mrs. Butler and to Professor Edgeworth, for their kindness in permitting me to print Miss Edgeworth’s letters to Mrs. Bushe; to Lord Dunsany, for the extract from “Plays of Gods and Men,” which has said for me what I could not say for myself; to the Editors of the Spectator and of Punch, for their permission to use Martin Ross’s letter and th...

An August Sunday afternoon in the north side of Dublin. Epitome of all that is hot, arid, and empty. Tall brick houses, browbeating each other in gloomy respectability across the white streets; broad pavements, promenaded mainly by the nomadic cat; stifling squares, wherein the infant of unfashionable parentage is taken for the daily baking that is its substitute for the breezes and the press of perambulators on the Bray Esplanade or the Kingston pier. Few towns are duller out of the seaso...

MY second cousin and I came to London for ten days in the middle of last June, and we stayed there for three weeks, waiting for a fine day. We were Irish, and all the English with whom we had hitherto come in contact had impressed upon us that we should never know what fine weather was till we came to England. Perhaps we came at a bad moment, when the weather, like the shops, was having its cheap sales. Certainly such half-hours of sunshine as we came in for were of the nature of “soiled r...

Lady Susan had never been so hungry in her life. So, for the sixth time, she declared between loud and unbridled yawns. She worked her chair across the parquet towards the fire-place, dragging the hearthrug into folds in her progress, and put her large and well-shod feet on the fender. “What a beast of a fire! When you’ve quite done with it, Bunny, I shouldn’t mind seeing it just the same. You are a selfish thing!” In obedience to this rebuke Major Bunbury moved an inch or two to one side....

“Well, I’m not exactly sure,” said the ironmonger, gazing out into the glaring street through a doorway festooned with tin mugs and gridirons, “but I think it was the gentleman as played the kettle-drum that rode him.” His eyes seemed to follow some half-remembered pageant, though outwardly they rested on the languid salutations of the saddler’s dog and the hotel collie on the opposite pavement. Miss O’Flannigan, who looked and was too hot for conversation, remained impassive where she sat...