author

Amanda McKittrick Ros

1860–1939

Remembered as one of literature’s great curiosities, this Irish novelist and poet became famous for wildly ornate prose that fascinated readers almost as much as it baffled them. Her work has endured not because it fit the rules, but because it ignored them so completely.

1 Audiobook

Irene Iddesleigh

Irene Iddesleigh

by Amanda McKittrick Ros

About the author

Born Anna Margaret McKittrick in 1860, she wrote under the pen name Amanda McKittrick Ros and became known as an Irish writer with a style that was unmistakably her own. She published her first novel, Irene Iddesleigh, in 1897, originally at her own expense.

Ros wrote novels and poetry, but her reputation rests on the extravagant, heavily decorated language that made her a cult figure in literary history. Readers and critics often mocked her work, yet that same over-the-top style helped keep it alive, and Irene Iddesleigh found new attention when it was reprinted in 1926.

She died in 1939, but her name still turns up wherever people talk about unusual books, forgotten literary fame, and the strange ways a writer can become unforgettable.