Amanda McKittrick Ros

Born Anna Margaret McKittrick in County Down, Ireland, in 1860, she later wrote under the name Amanda McKittrick Ros. Before becoming known as a writer, she trained as a teacher and worked in education, and she published her first novel, Irene Iddesleigh, at her own expense in 1897.

Her reputation rests on a highly unusual style: elaborate, emotional, and packed with decorative language. That style made her a target for ridicule, but it also gave her a strange afterlife in literary culture, where readers remembered her as one of the most spectacularly over-the-top prose writers in English.

Ros continued to write novels and poetry, and her work remained famous less for popularity than for its singular voice. She died in 1939, but her name endures because her writing is so distinctive that it is still discussed, debated, and enjoyed in its own unforgettable way.