A prolific writer, Bertha Leith Adams was primarily a novelist; she published only two volumes of verse, one in 1887 and the other in 1907. Her poems are by no means innovative in style, but they suggest great feeling and reveal a sensitivity to her surroundings and an active interest in the issues and people of her day.

Bertha Jane Grundy was born, probably in 1837, in the town of Mottram in Longdale, Cheshire. Her father, Frederick Grundy, was a solicitor. In 1859 she married army surgeon Andrew Leith Adams of the First Battalion Cheshire, with whom she began the travels that became the source for much of her writing. The first six months of their marriage were spent in Ireland, during which time Bertha Adams was introduced to the Irish viceregal court and attended parties at the home of the prominent physician Sir Henry Marsh, where she met many of the...