Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.

SOME EXPERIENCES OF AN IRISH R.M. O f all the collections of sketches and stories for which nineteenth- century fiction is famous, Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. remains foremost for its combined anthropological and comic value. With an ear for native dialogue that some have claimed to be second only to James Joyce s, Somerville and Ross portrayed the lives of the people of the west of Ireland at a time when the entire country was on the verge of serious historical change. This collection provided the last few chuckles for the ruling Anglo-Irish Ascendancy class that a new national order would soon supplant. These hugely successful quasi-stories, narrated by an epitome of British authority called the R.M. (Resident Magistrate: a justice of the peace), display an extraordinary capacity for joking in the face of disaster. EDITH SOMERVILLE and MARTIN ROSS The partnership of Somerville and Ross was regarded as a literary miracle. While they were cousins who shared a mutual greatgrandfather, they did not meet until they were in their twenties. Edith Oenone Somerville (1858-1949) was from Castletownshend, County Cork; Violet Martin (1862-1915) was from much further north in Connemara, County Galway, where she managed the sixteenth-century family estate of Ross, which gave her the nom de plume by which she is better known. Their work was so intimately embedded in their actual lives, backgrounds, and surroundings that many of the almost Dickensian caricatures of Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. were based on their friends.