The influence of Victorian Spiritualism and Psychical Research in the literature and culture of the long 19th century

The Spirited Life of Edith Somerville

by Wendy Cousins

Cousins, W.E. (2008) The Spirited Life of Edith Somerville. Paranormal Review, Issue 47, 11-15.

Edith Somerville was born on May 2nd 1858 on the island of Corfu, but returned to her family home at Drishane, County... more Edith Somerville was born on May 2nd 1858 on the island of Corfu, but returned to her family home at Drishane, County Cork, when she was a year old. She studied art in London, Dusseldorf, and Paris, after 1884, and exhibited paintings in Dublin, London and New York. Yet, despite these artistic capabilities and her political activities in campaigning for women’s suffrage as President of the Munster Women’s Franchise League, she is best known as a writer and part of a successful literary partnership with her cousin, Violet Martin, under the joint pen-names of ‘Somerville and Ross’.  As well as being author of the 'Irish R.M.' novels, Edith Somerville also held a life-long interest in the paranormal and was socially well-placed to observe and personally well-equipped to describe the place which the supernatural held in the hearts and minds of the Anglo-Irish social circles to which she belonged.