Larne, County Antrim has been notable for its daily sailings to Stranraer in Scotland; by archaeologists as the site of a former Stone Age factory for flint implements, now obliterated by the march of progress, also as a base for exploring the marvellous Coast Road and north of the County. But to literary people, it was for long the home of one of the most outlandish, perhaps surreal, perhaps simply preposterous novelists in the English language. In 1954 Jack Loudan published a study of Amanda McKitterick Ros (one `s' only), whose novels Irene Iddesleigh, Delina Delaney and Helen Huddlestone are not to be had today and, indeed, were not easily available when Loudan wrote his book O Rare Amanda. She was a former schoolteacher, who married the stationmaster at Larne Harbour. The inside cover of the book tells us that this is the first, and probably the last, biography of that "greatest" literary freak of all time, Amanda Ros. She achieved the reputation - many think undeservedly - of being "the world's worst novelist while considering herself to be, with the possible exception of Marie Corelli, the world's best." She carried on through life a running battle with lawyers and literary critics. She published her own books with one exception, in 1926 the Nonesuch Press of England published her novel Irene Iddesleigh.
Eminent people in the literary world were fascinated: Aldous Huxley, Sir Desmond McCarthy, paid tribute to her books, while she claimed that all the crowned heads of Europe, except the Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia, read her books. Her card is reproduced in the book, and at the top, in capitals, is the legend "ALWAYS AT HOME TO THE HONOURABLE." Loudan met her three times: "..
a tall, stately woman with bright twinkling eyes behind a pair of shining pince-nez, a black lace cap arranged neatly on her head." She read him a passage from her work-inprogress Helen Huddlestone. "Another moment and Lord Raspberry had her clasped in his stout, strong arms conveying her into Snowdrop Lodge ... Leading her to a couch in the centre of the room, she reluctantly sat thereon, weeping acidly. Still listening to her insisting on going home, he turned a deaf ear to her appeal ..."
When Loudan asked Amanda why she called her main character Lord Raspberry, she replied: "What else would I call him?" O rare and preposterous Amanda, she died on February 3 1939. Does Larne remember her?