Nick Page, author of
In Search of the World's Worst Writers, rated Ros the worst of the worst. He says that "For Amanda, eyes are 'piercing orbs', legs are 'bony supports', people do not blush, they are 'touched by the hot hand of bewilderment.'"
Her novels
Aldous Huxley wrote that "In Mrs. Ros we see, as we see in the Elizabethan novelists, the result of the discovery of art by an unsophisticated mind and of its first conscious attempt to produce the artistic. It is remarkable how late in the history of every literature simplicity is invented." This is how she informs the reader how Delina earned money by doing needlework:
She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness.
Her novel
Delina Delaney begins:
Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?
Page comments: "I first read this sentence nearly three years ago. Since then, I have read it once a week in an increasingly desperate search for meaning. But I still don't understand it." (The sentence approximately means, "Have you ever been to that part of Ireland which has been studied by the government, who have aimed to modernise its agriculture?")
The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included such luminaries as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros' work for the longest length of time while keeping a straight face.
Northrop Frye said of Ros's novels that they use "rhetorical material without being able to absorb or assimilate it: the result is pathological, a kind of literary diabetes".
Her poetry
A poet as well as a novelist, Ros wrote
Poems of Puncture and
Fumes of Formation. The latter contains "Visiting Westminster Abbey," which opens:
- Holy Moses! Have a look!
- Flesh decayed in every nook!
- Some rare bits of brain lie here,
- Mortal loads of beef and beer,
- Some of whom are turned to dust,
- Every one bids lost to lust;
- Royal flesh so tinged with 'blue'
- Undergoes the same as you.
As of 2004, none of her works are in print. Her books are rare and first editions command prices of $300 to $800 in the used-book market. Belfast Central Library has an archive of her papers, and the Queen's University of Belfast has some volumes by Ros in the stacks.
The Frank Ferguson-edited collection, Ulster-Scots Writing: An Anthology (Four Courts, 2008) includes her poem, 'The Town of Tare'.
On 11 November 2006 as part of a 50 Year celebration, renowned librarian Elspeth Legg hosted a major retrospective of her works, culminating in a public reading by 65 delegates of the entire contents of 'Fumes of Formation'. The theme of the workshop that followed was 'Suppose you chance to write a book', Line 17 of 'Myself' from page 2 of Fumes of Formation.