Perfect Cousins
Friday 4 March 2005 20:15-20:35 (Radio 3)
The Cork writing duo Edith Somerville and Violet Martin Ross produced some of the finest Irish novels of the nineteenth century, yet even their best work Irish RM tales and The Real Charlotte have faded from the Irish literary landscape.
Though second-cousins, and life-partners, it was their writing partnership which their families saw as vulgar. Robbie Meredith examines what shaped and drove their relationships, and investigates whether Cork's status as 2005's European Capital of Culture might lead to a new audience for their fiction.
