The first of these two novels, written back in the 1890s, is generally agreed to be Somerville and Ross's masterpiece, and one of the half-dozen or so Irish novels which might justifiably be called great. It covers a whole social panorama, from the Big Houses to the small-town bourgeoisie down to the thatched cottages, and though the authors are somewhat snobbish and condescending towards Francie,
the pretty young interloper from Dublin, she is real and touching even in her social gaucherie. The contrasting portrait of scheming Charlotte herself, a really bad woman, has a kind of Balzacian power. The second novel has never gained the popularity of the first and in certain aspects is rather a flawed book, but it too is a powerful social chronicle of a world which is not entirely gone. The mansion of the title is based on Tyrone House.
