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Life
?1860-1924; b. Manor Cunningham, Co. Donegal; dg. Rev Dr A Rentoul; ed. France and Germany; m. Dr. Robert Esler in 1883; issued The Way They Loved at Grimpat: Village Idylls (1893); The Maid of the Manse (1895); The Wardlaws (1896); The Trackless Way (1904). JMC IF SUTH DUB
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References
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904); selects ‘The Criminality of Letty Moore,’ and cites The Way of the Transgressor; Mid Green Pastures; Youth at the Prow; The Awakening of Helen Thorpe, and says that her studies of Presbyterian N. Ireland are vivid and true. [ULST]
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), The Way They Loved at Grimpat, village idylls (London: Sampson, Low 1893); The Maid of the Manse (London: Sampson, Low 1895); The Wardlaws (London: Smith 1896); The Trackless Way ([London: ]Brimley Johnson 1904), 465pp. Remarks, Presbyterian gentry in Donegal. In Grimpat are love stories of unaffected pathos and quiet humour; Manse deals with presbyterian clerical life in Co. Donegal with pathos and humour; Wardlaws is a domestic story in rural Ireland; Trackless Way relates a story of Man’s quest for God, set in Garvaghy, Co. Innismore, Ulster, dealing with a Presbyterian minister and his difficulties (dismissed for socialism doctrines); the author is equally opposed to Calvinism and Catholicism [IF] DUB cites Trangressors, Grimpat (1893), and Manse.
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow: Longmans 1988); Erminda Rentoul, née Rentoul, ?1860-1924; b. Donegal, ed. France and Germany; grad. Royal Univ., Ireland, 1879; m. doctor, Robert Esler; lived in London; specialises in idyllic village life, incl. Almost a Pauper (1888); The Way of Transgressors (1890); The Way they Loved at Grimpat (1890) [?sic]; A Maid of the Manse (1895), has an Irish setting, as does The Wardlaws (1896), her best-received, dealing with 50 yrs of family life in genteel decay.
Belfast Public Library holds [another author], Early History of Medicine in Belfast (1885); Guide to Belfast, Giant’s Causeway, and N. Ireland (1884); also, fictions, The Way they Loved at Grimpat (1894); The Wardlaws (1896).
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