Moore, George

Related Category: Philosophy: Biographies

1852–1933, English author, b. Ireland. As a young man he lived in Paris, studying at various art schools. Inspired by Zola, Flaubert, Turgenev, and the 19th-century French realists, Moore turned to writing, publishing his first novel, A Modern Lover, in 1883. A Mummer's Wife (1885), in portraying the degradation of a woman through alcohol, introduced naturalism into the Victorian novel. Moore's most famous novel, Esther Waters (1894), poignantly relates the poverty and hardships valiantly endured by a religious girl. Included among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Young Man (1888), Evelyn Innes (1898), Sister Teresa (1901), The Brook Kerith (1916), and Héloise and Abelard (1921); and the volumes of short stories Celibates (1895) and The Untilled Field (1903), the latter reminiscent of Dostoevsky. About 1900, Moore returned to Ireland and became associated with William Butler Yeats, George Russell (A. E.), and others in the Irish literary renaissance. His famous three-volume semi-autobiographical work, Hail and Farewell (1911–14), is a highly entertaining account of his experiences in Ireland.

See his letters, ed. by H. E. Gerber (1968); biographies by S. L. Mitchell (1916), J. Hone (1936, repr. 1973), and A. Frazier (2000); studies by J. Egleson (1973), R. A. Cave (1978), J. E. Dunleavy, ed. (1983), and J. Egleson, ed. (1983).