Life
1860-1939 [née Anna Margaret M’Kittrick; purportedly Amanda
Malvina Fitzalan Anna Margaret McLelland M’Kittrick after heroine
in Regina Maria Roche’s gothic novel Children of the Abbey]
b. 8 Dec., Dromaness, nr. Ballynahinch, Co. Down; dg. of Edward Amlane
M’Kittrick, head teacher of Drumaness High School; ed., Marlborough
Coll., Dublin, TTC, 1884-86; took up post in Larne, and m. Larne station
master, Andrew Ross, 30 August 1887 [aetat 17]; given money by him on
their 10th anniversary to publish her first novel, Irene Iddesleigh,
composed before her 16th birthday, and was described in a review by humourist
Barry Pain as ‘the book of the century’, causing him to become
an arch enemy, lambasted in Delina Delaney (1898) as a ‘cancerous
irritant wart’ and at his death in a poem entitled "The End
of ‘Pain’"; made sufficient money from the novel to built
a house in Larne named ‘Iddesleigh’; inherited lime kiln, 1908,
and involved in 5-year legal battle, forming a hatred of lawyers; death
of Mr. Ross, Aug. 1917, after retirement two years previously occasioned
by stress of wartime activity; m. Thomas Rodgers, 1922; a final novel
publ. posthumously, Helen Huddleson, makes her heroine journey to Stranraer
to meet Andres Ross at Larne, describing him as a station agent ‘whose
genial manner and exemplary courteousness are widely known’; reputedly
Mark Twain added one of her books to his library of ‘hogwash literature’
[but see infra], also poems, Poems of Puncture (1913); Fumes
of Formation (1933); d. 3 Feb.; Helen Huddleson, an unfinished
novel, was completed by Loudan (1969), while T. Stanley Mercer edited
St. Scandalbags (1954) is a satire on Wyndam Lewis; Aldous Huxley,
who called her novels ‘classics’, formed a club with other mock-admirers
to exchange quotations; some of her manuscripts are held in the Belfast
Central Library Irish Collection. OCEL IF2 DIL DIW ATT DUB OCIL
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Works
Fiction, Irene Iddlesleigh (Belfast: W. & G.
Baird 1897; reps. London: Nonesuch 1926; NY: Boni & Liveright 1927),
and Do., rep. in Martin Seymour-Smith, ed., Cupful of Tears: Sixteen
Victorian Novelettes ([London:] Wolfe Publishing Co. 1965), pp.9-81;
Delina Delaney (Belfast: R Aickin 1898; London: Chatto & Windus
1935); Donald Dudley, The Bastard Critic (Thames Ditton, Surrey:
Merle 1954), fragmentary novel; Jack Loudan, ed. [with additional chapter],
Helen Huddleston, (London: Chatto & Windus 1969).
Poems, Poems of Puncture (London: Arthur H Stockwell 1913); Fumes of Formation (Belfast: R Carswell 1933). Letters, Bayonets of Bastard Sheen (East Sheen: priv. 1949).
Criticism, T. Stanley Mercer, ed. St. Scandalbags together with Meet Ireene by D. B. Wyndham Lewis & At the Sing of the Harrow by F. Anstey (Thames Ditton, Surrey: Merle 1954).
Miscellaneous, Frank Ormsby, ed. and intro., Thine in Calm and Storm: an Amanda McKittrick Ros Reader (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1988).
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Criticism
Aldous Huxley, ‘Eupheus Redivivus’, in On the Margin (London:
Chatto & Windus 1923).
Jack Loudan, O Rare Amanda!: The Life of Amanda McKittrick Ros (London: Chatto & Windus 1954; 2nd edn., new pref. 1969).
Kim Bielenberg, ‘An Irishman’s Diary’, 1 & 2
Jan. 1997.
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Notes
Blackstaff Catalogue (1988) quotes Brian Fallon’s comparison
of Ros with William McGonagall: ‘What he did in verse, she did in
prose; and the results are equally hilarious - unconscious humour raised
to a level of genius.’
Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast, holds Delina Delaney [&] Fumes of Formation (Belfast 1933); Irene Iddesleigh (Belfast 1907) [[signed copy]; St Scandalbags (Merel Press 1954) [signed by Merel]; Poems of Puncture (London n.d.) [signed copy]; Bayonets of Bastard Sheen (1954) [No. 6 of 50 signed Donald Dudley].
Belfast Public Library holds Iddlesleigh (1897); Delina Delaney (n.d.); Poems of Puncture (1921); Fumes of Formation (1933); Bayonets of Bastard Sheen (1949); St. Scandalbags (1954).
In his study, O Rare Amanda! (1954), Loudan that ‘she writes
with a burning imagination that will disregard sense should it hinder
the intensity of her invention.’
There is a BBC radio feature Denis Johnston (12 July 1943). See also references to the sentimental novelist in Louie Bennett, by R. M. Fox, (1950), p.15.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)