George Moore (novelist)

George Augustus Moore (February 24, 1852 - January 21, 1933) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family, originally intended to be an artist, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day.

London and Paris

In 1868, Moore's father was elected MP for Mayo and the family moved to London the following year. Here, Moore senior tried, unsuccessfully, to have his son follow a career in the military. When his father died in 1870, Moore inherited the family estate which had a total valuation at the time of £3,596. He handed it over to Maurice to manage and moved to Paris to study art on attaining his majority in 1873. He met many of the key artists and writers of the time, including Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Daudet, Mallarmé, Turgenev and, above all, Zola, who was to prove an influential figure in Moore's subsequent development as a writer.

Related Topics:
1868 - MP - London - 1870 - Paris - 1873 - Pissarro - Degas - Renoir - Monet - Daudet - Mallarmé - Turgenev

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In 1880, Moore was forced to return to Ireland in order to raise £3,000 to pay debts incurred on the family estate. During his time back in Mayo, he gained a reputation as a fair landlord, continuing the family tradition of not evicting tenants and refusing to carry firearms when travelling round the estate.

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While in Ireland, he decided to abandon art and move to London to become a professional writer. His first book, a collection of poems called The Flowers of Passion, had appeared in 1877 and a second collection, Pagan Poems, followed in 1881. These early poems reflect his interest in French symbolism and are now almost entirely neglected. He then embarked on a series of novels in the realist style. His first novel, A Modern Lover (1883), was banned in England because of its, for the times, explicit portrayal of the amorous pursuits of its hero. His next book, A Mummers Wife (1885) is widely recognised as the first major novel in the realist style in the English language. Other realist novels by Moore from this period include Esther Waters (1894), the story of an unmarried housemaid who becomes pregnant and is abandoned by her footman lover, and A Drama in Muslin (1886), a satiric story of the marriage trade in Anglo-Irish society that hints at same-sex relationships among the unmarried daughters of the gentry. Both of these books have remained almost constantly in print since their first publication. His 1887 novel A Mere Accident is an attempt to merge his symbolist and realist influences. He also published a collection of short stories: Celibates (1895).

Related Topics:
1877 - 1881 - Symbolism - 1883 - England - 1885 - English language - 1894 - Anglo-Irish - Same-sex - 1887 - 1895

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Because of his willingness to tackle such issues as prostitution, extramarital sex and lesbianism in his fiction, Moore's novels met with some disapprobation at first. However, a public taste for realist fiction was growing, and this, combined with his success as an art critic with the books Impressions and Opinions (1891) and Modern Painting (1893), which was the first significant attempt to introduce the Impressionists to an English audience, meant that he was eventually able to live off the proceeds of his literary work.

Related Topics:
Prostitution - Lesbianism - 1891 - 1893 - Impressionist

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