Larne is known as a port from which one sails to Scotland Larnian man is a term used by archaeologists but for some connoisseurs of odd corners of literature, it is the long time home of Amanda McKittrick Ros, one of the most remarkable writers of English of this or any other century.
She is an acquired taste. Some people can't take her at all.
Writes Willie O'Kane in the summer issue of Causeway.
"To the select coterie which has, for reasons of amusement or genuine attraction, ace claimed her work, she reposes on a pinnacle of perfection. To others she is simply the world's worst novelist.
Her first novel, Irene Iddesleigh (1887), was financed by her first husband, the station master at Larne Harbour, as a tenth wedding anniversary present.
Her second, Delina Delaney, is on the same theme of maidenly virtue and scheming villains. In this novel, as an example of her style, Lady Gifford clears the throat "of any little mucus that perchance would serve to obstruct the tone of her resolute explanation", while her husband does not perspire or sweat, but "sheds globules of liquid lava".
Another gem quoted in the article runs "Speak Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue." Amanda admitted, writes O'Kane, that her personality had "disturbed the bowels of millions". Her use of the English language is more than eccentric. It is clear that her grasp of the meaning of many words often failed her. She bends words around in a way that could, at a stretch, a great stretch, be said to have some thing of the approach of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear. But they knew their English.
One critic, or cultist, considered her Irene Iddesleigh a better book than Some Reactions of Colloidal Protosoida and The Chartered Accountant's Year Book. Amanda hated critics and attacked them vehemently.
Terms included bastard monkey headed mites, maggoty numb skulls, clay crabs of corruption, crow drops and egotistical earth worms.
Then in 1930 Jack Loudan mether, and wrote her biography Rate Amanda, published in 1954. She wrote three stories or novels and two volumes of verse. Poems 91 Punctute and Fumes of Formation. Frank Ormsby published a selection.
Thine in Storm and Colm. She is perhaps, for those, whom he describes as connoisseurs of the ridiculous in literature Causeway, with the subtitle Cultural Traditions Journal, costs £2 and issues from Botanic Avenue. Belfast. This, issue includes three articles on the legacy of 1916, all worth, reading, and other contents of note.