Professor Claire Connolly brings Somerville and Ross to life in West Cork

7 Jul 2025

• The remarkable literary partnership of Edith Somerville and Violet Martin, known under their pen name Somerville and Ross, will be explored at West Cork Literary Festival.
• Professor Claire Connolly has written prefaces for new prestigious riverrun editions of The Experiences of an Irish R.M. and The Real Charlotte.

The story of Somerville and Ross – cousins, collaborators, and creators of some of Ireland’s most enduring fiction –  will take centre stage at West Cork Literary Festival in a special event with Professor Claire Connolly.

Professor Claire Connolly, Professor of Modern English at UCC College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, will explore the remarkable literary partnership of Edith Somerville and Violet Martin, known under their pen name Somerville and Ross, and explore why their work continues to resonate today.

Professor Connolly has spent many years immersed in their worlds, writing prefaces for new prestigious riverrun editions of The Experiences of an Irish R.M. and The Real Charlotte.

Her introductions map how two upper-class women produced fiction that was both bitingly funny and socially sharp. Gender dynamics, the pull of property and inheritance, the tensions of social ambition, and the quiet violence of institutional power drive their plots and shape every character’s fate.

Professor Connolly said: “Somerville and Ross wrote sharp, stylish books that framed a changing Ireland: a moving picture of political upheaval and everyday interactions. Their work speaks to our current concerns about housing, our painful history of institutionalisation and our perennial preoccupation with the power of sexual desire.”

“The Irish R.M. stories are funny and a touch vicious while The Real Charlotte —arguably the greatest Irish novel of the nineteenth century — gives us one of literature’s most memorably horrible female characters, a woman whose surroundings can scarcely contain her furious perimenopausal energy.”

For those in West Cork, this is chance to hear the stories told where they first took root. Professor Connolly with join Dr Danielle O'Donovan, architectural historian, curator of Cork city’s Butter Museum and life-long Somerville and Ross fan, on Sunday, 13 July at 3pm in Marino Church, Bantry. Tickets are available here.

For readers who can’t make it to Bantry, the riverrun editions of The Experiences of an Irish R.M. and The Real Charlotte are available nationwide and online.