Line #32 Creator/AmandaMcKittrickRos


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/716wu_ktmnl.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Not pictured: [[https://slate.com/culture/2013/01/was-amanda-mckittrick-ros-the-worst-novelist-in-history.html several professional writers laughing behind her back]].]]
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4	->''Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?''
5	-->--Opening lines of ''Delina Delaney''[[labelnote:Translation]]"You ever been in that part of Erin's garden where the dirt is proof of a politician making a smart decision to help the farmers?"[[/labelnote]]
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7	Anna Margaret Ross (8 December 1860 - 2 February 1939), known by her PenName Amanda [=McKittrick=] Ros, was an Irish writer. She wrote {{poetry}} and a number of novels, publishing her first novel, ''Irene Iddesleigh,'' in 1897.
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9	She was born in Drumaness, County Down, on 8 December 1860 and was christened Anna Margaret [=McKittrick=] on 27 January 1861. Some time in the 1880s she attended Marlborough Teacher Training College in Dublin, was appointed Monitor at Millbrook National School, Larne, County Antrim, finished her training at Marlborough, and then became a qualified teacher at the same school.
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11	In her first visit to Larne, she met Andrew Ross, a widower who worked as a station master there. They married on 30 August 1887, and Andrew financed the publication of his wife's first novel, ''Irene Iddesleigh,'' thus starting her literary career. She took the PenName Amanda [=McKittrick=] Ros and went to write two more novels and a number of poems.
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13	She died on 2 February 1939 at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, after receiving injuries from a fall.
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15	Ros's literary work was not widely read and is considered to be SoBadItsGood, due to its PurpleProse. UsefulNotes/TheInklings, a group of authors whose names included Creator/JRRTolkien and Creator/CSLewis, held contests to see who could spend the most time reading her works without laughing.
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18	!!Works:
19	* ''Literature/IreneIddesleigh'' (novel)
20	* ''Literature/DelinaDelaney'' (novel)
21	* ''Poems of Puncture'' (poetry)
22	* ''Fumes of Formation'' (poetry)
23	* ''Literature/HelenHuddleson'' (posthumous novel)
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26	!!Tropes that apply to Ros and her work:
27	* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: It certainly appealed to her!
28	* AlliterativeTitle: All of her works: ''Irene Iddesleigh'', ''Delina Delaney'', ''Poems of Puncture'', ''Fumes of Formation'', and ''Helen Huddleson''.
29	* AgeGapRomance: In ''Irene Iddesleigh''. The titular character is young, while John Dunfern is, as Ros puts it, "a man of forty summers".
30	* AsideComment: All of her books had Ros [[BreakTheFourthWall addressing the reader directly]], asking them ''their'' opinion.
31	* FloweryElizabethanEnglish: Befitting her status as "an Elizabethan born out of her time", her characters, at least in ''Irene Iddesleigh'' and for the few times they do speak, randomly dip into Middle English for words such as "thou".
32	* InTheStyleOf: Creator/AldousHuxley noted that Ros wrote in the 16th century style of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphuism Euphuism]]. Susan Sontag decades later stated that Euphuism was the progenitor of {{camp}}, which would explain why literary greats found her writing so hilarious.
33	* MeaninglessMeaningfulWords: She was essentially incapable of writing a plain English sentence.
34	* PurpleProse: Bow to the Queen & Empress of the Hogwash Guild[[note]]a title bestowed on her by none other than Creator/MarkTwain[[/note]]. Ros seems to be incapable of saying even the most basic things directly. For example:
35	-->"She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father’s slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness]]."[[note]]Translation: She worked as a seamstress so she wouldn't have to live on her father's money.[[/note]]
36	* RapeAsDrama: Maybe. In ''Irene Iddlesleigh'', it's not clear whether a drunken Oscar Otwell raped the title character... or just said a lot of mean words to her.
37	* RougeAnglesOfSatin: In Chapter 4 of ''Irene Iddesleigh'' the term "tête-à-têtes" was mistakenly written as "tetè-a-tetès". We don't know if Ros wrote it that way or if that were just her publisher.
38	* ThemeNaming: In ''Helen Huddleson'', many characters are named after fruits.
39	* YoureJustJealous: Her default retort to many of her critics. She went as far as claiming critic Barry Pain was jealous of her talent only because he was secretly in love with her.

Context Creator / AmandaMcKittrickRos