Summary: Chapter I will situate Somerville and Martin within their historical context, both as individuals and as members of the Anglo-Irish gentry. The authors' affinities with a number of their Irish literary antecedents are traced in Chapter II. The ways in which places are made use of in the novels (e.g., the presence of actual locales, the archetypal use of place, the effect of place on character, the struggle for the land, etc.) are considered in the third chapter, while place in the short stories is the focus of the fourth.