Over at First Things, David Bentley Hart has written something of an homage to Amanda McKittrick Ros, author of such turgid prose as “Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!”
That’s from Ros’s 1897 novel Irene Iddesleigh, a book that Ros herself considered a masterpiece, but was published only when her husband paid a Belfast printer to do so. Hart’s appreciation makes for a delightful read—if only to be reminded that there have been far worse writers than I.
