MOORE, George (Augustus)

Nationality: Irish. Born: at Moore Hall, Ballyglass, County Mayo, 24 February 1852; moved with his family to London, 1869. Education: Oscott College, Birmingham, 1861-67; attended evening classes in art, South Kensington Museum, and studied with an army tutor, 1870; studied painting in London, 1870-73, and at Academie Julian and Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1873-74. Career: Lived in Paris, 1873-79, and in London and Ireland from 1879; wrote for the Spectator and the Examiner; art critic, the Speaker, 1891-95; co-founder, with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and William Butler Yeats, Irish Literary Theatre, 1899, which became the Irish National Theatre Society at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1904; lived in Dublin, 1901-11, and in London from 1911; High Sheriff of Mayo, 1905. Died: 21 January 1933.

Publications

Collections

Works (Carra Edition). 21 vols., 1922-24.

Works (Uniform Edition). 20 vols., 1924-33.

Works (Ebury Edition). 20 vols., 1937.

Short Stories

Celibates. 1895.

The Untilled Field. 1903; revised edition, 1903, 1914, 1926, 1931.

A Story-Teller's Holiday. 1918; revised edition, 2 vols., 1928.

In Single Strictness. 1922; revised edition, 1923; as Celibate Lives, 1927.

Peronnik the Fool (story). 1926; revised edition, 1928.

A Flood (story). 1930.

In Minor Keys: The Uncollected Short Stories, edited David B. Eakin and Helmut E. Gerber. 1985.

Novels

A Modern Lover. 1883; revised edition, 1885; as Lewis Seymour and Some Women, 1917.

A Mummer's Wife. 1884; revised edition, 1886, 1917; as An Actor's Wife, 1889.

A Drama in Muslin: A Realistic Novel. 1886; revised edition, asMuslin, 1915.

A Mere Accident. 1887.

Spring Days: A Realistic Novel—A Prelude to Don Juan. 1888; revised edition, 1912; as Shifting Love, 1891.

Mike Fletcher. 1889.

Vain Fortune. 1891; revised edition, 1892, 1895.

Esther Waters. 1894; revised edition, 1899, 1920; edited by DavidSkilton, 1983.

Evelyn Innes. 1898; revised edition, 1898, 1901, 1908.

Sister Theresa. 1901; revised edition, 1909.

The Lake. 1905; revised edition, 1906, 1921.

The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story. 1916; revised edition, 1927.

Héloïse and Abélard. 1921; Fragments, 1921.

Ulick and Soracha. 1926.

Aphrodite in Aulis. 1930; revised edition, 1931.

Plays

Martin Luther, with Bernard Lopez. 1879.

Les Cloches de Corneville (lyrics only, with Augustus Moore), from a play by Robert Planquette and Louis Claireville (produced 1883). 1883.

The Fashionable Beauty, with J.M. Glover (produced 1885).

Le Sycamore (in French), with Paul Alexis, from the play Sweethearts by W.S. Gilbert (produced 1886?).

The Honeymoon in Eclipse, from a work by Mrs. G.W. Godfrey (produced 1888).

Thérèse Raquin, from a play by A. Texeira de Mattos based on the novel by Zola (produced 1891).

The Strike at Arlingford (produced 1893). 1893.

Journeys End in Lovers Meeting, with John Oliver Hobbes (produced 1894). In Tales without Temperaments by Hobbes, 1902.

The Fool's Hour: The First Act of a Comedy, with John OliverHobbes, in Yellow Book 1, 1894.

The Bending of the Bough (produced 1900). 1900.

Diarmuid and Grania, with W.B. Yeats (produced 1901). 1951; edited by Anthony Farrow, 1974.

Esther Waters, from his own novel (produced 1911). 1913; edited by W. Eugene Davis, in The Celebrated Case of Esther Waters, 1984.

The Apostle. 1911; revised version, 1923; revised version, as The Passing of the Essenes (produced 1930), 1930.

Elizabeth Cooper (produced 1913). 1913; revised version, as The Coming of Gabrielle (produced 1923), 1920.

The Making of an Immortal (produced 1928). 1927.

Poetry

Flowers of Passion. 1877.

Pagan Poems. 1881.

Other

Literature at Nurse; or, Circulating Morals. 1885.

Parnell and His Island. 1887.

Confessions of a Young Man. 1888; revised edition, 1889, 1904, 1917, 1926; edited by Susan Dick, 1972.

Impressions and Opinions. 1891; revised edition, 1913.

Modern Painting. 1893; revised edition, 1896.

The Royal Academy. 1895.

Memoirs of My Dead Life. 1906; revised edition, 1921.

Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters. 1906.

Hail and Farewell: A Trilogy (Ave, Salve, Vale) (autobiography). 3 vols., 1911-14; revised edition, 1925; edited by Richard Allen Cave, 1 vol., 1976.

Avowals (autobiography). 1919.

Moore Versus Harris: An Intimate Correspondence Between Moore and Frank Harris. 1921.

Conversations in Ebury Street (autobiography). 1924: revised edition, 1930.

Letters to Edouard Dujardin 1866-1922 (in French), translated by John Eglinton. 1929.

The Talking Pine. 1931.

A Communication to My Friends. 1933.

Letters (to John Eglinton). 1942.

Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. 1957.

Moore in Transition: Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman 1894-1910, edited by Helmut E. Gerber. 1968.

Moore's Correspondence with the Mysterious Countess, edited by David B. Eakin and Robert Langenfeld. 1984.

Moore on Parnassus: Letters (1900-1933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends, and Acquaintances, edited by Helmut E. Gerber and O.M. Brack, Jr. 1988.

Editor, Pure Poetry: An Anthology. 1924.

Translator, The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe, by Longus. 1924.

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Bibliography:

A Bibliography of Moore by Edwin Gilcher, 1970, supplement, 1988; Moore: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography of Writings about Him by Robert Langenfeld, 1987.

Critical Studies:

The Life of Moore by Joseph M. Hone, 1936; Moore: A Reconsideration by Malcolm J. Brown, 1955; GM: Memories of Moore by Nancy Cunard, 1956; Moore by A. Norman Jeffares, 1965; Moore: L'Homme et l'oeuvre by J.C. Nöel, 1966; Moore's Mind and Art edited by Graham Owens, 1968; The Man of Wax: Critical Essays on Moore edited by Douglas Hughes, 1971; Moore: The Artist's Vision, The Storyteller's Art by Janet Dunleavy, 1973, and Moore in Perspective edited by Dunleavy, 1983; A Study of the Novels of Moore by Richard Allen Cave, 1978; Moore by Anthony Farrow, 1978; The Way Back: Moore's The Untilled Field and The Lake edited by Robert Welch, 1982; Moore and German Romanticism by Patrick Bridgewater, 1988; George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction by Elizabeth Grubgeld, 1994; A Peculiar Man: A Life of George Moore by Tony Gray, 1996.

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George Moore is almost universally acknowledged as the originator of the modern short story in Ireland. Moore's first efforts in establishing the genre appeared in Parnell and His Island, a vicious and immature series of sketches that pillories both urban and rural Ireland. Taking the nineteenth-century naturalist writer's approach, Moore, being a great admirer of Émile Zola, mercilessly limned the worst, most degrading scenes he could, which gained him lasting enmity among his countrymen, both in his own upper class and in the peasant classes. "Dublin" is a criticism of the dilapidated lifestyle led by the old ascendancy in the nation's capital, while sketches such as "An Eviction" criticize not only the heartlessness of landlords evicting destitute peasants from their holdings—so that the land could be used more profitably for grazing sheep and cattle—but also the peasants themselves, who are depicted as stupid, filthy, and without any of the innate nobility credited to them by writers such as Yeats and Lady Gregory. But the collection also established the beginnings of a dominating cultural symbol: the image of physical paralysis or sluggishness as a representation of spiritual inertia.

This theme became a virtually lifelong preoccupation with Moore, who was also the first Irish writer to link paralysis with exile: those who could escape the disease before becoming trapped by their own weakness and lack of resolve did so. James Joyce typically received all the credit for originating and developing this thematic dialectic, but Moore is finally receiving his due as the first to base a literary work upon it, both in novel form—A Drama in Muslin and The Lake—and in the short story genre with Celibates and The Untilled Field. The latter, modeled on Turgenev's Sportman's Sketches, is considered the first modern collection of Irish short stories ever published, and this is certainly true if we think in terms of collections of discrete stories that make some attempt at thematic unity. Celibates, though published eight years earlier, is not accorded this distinction because its stories are too few and too long, even though they are thematically unified as the collection's title clearly indicates.

The title of The Untilled Field similarly suggests its content and acts as a symbol to reinforce its dominant theme. Barrenness—agricultural, sexual, and spiritual—inactivity, paralysis, and potential going to waste are all primary interpretations of this symbol. Although some stories, such as "The Clerk's Quest," have urban settings, most are purely rural and devoted to analyzing the factors that continued to deplete Ireland's population despite the end of extreme famine conditions. Most centrally, in stories such as "Some Parishioners" and "Julia Cahill's Curse," the Irish clergy are assailed for helping to increase the flow of exiles—by stifling and controlling the people, especially any of independent spirit and enterprising nature. Through such tactics as denunciation, arranged marriages, and stiff fees charged for performance of the sacraments, the priests are depicted as more concerned with the preservation of clerical power than with national or even communal well being.

This would all seem to suggest a writer as out of control here as he had been 15 years earlier in Parnell and His Island, but such is not the case. Balancing the various unsavory priests are a number who are restrained, benevolent, and quite likeable. Father Stafford, in "Some Parishioners," for example, neutralizes much of the antipathy we feel for Father Maguire, who cares more about theological technicalities than about the day-to-day happiness of his people. In "A Letter to Rome" and "A Playhouse in the Waste" Father MacTurnan is shown making sincere, selfless, and sometimes naive efforts on behalf of his poor parishioners, though he is in many ways a broken man by the end of the second story. Still, a sense of balance does generally prevail in the collection, and not all of Ireland's woes are laid on the clerical doorstep, as in "The Exile," where the able brother emigrates—more out of a broken heart than anything else—while the inept brother remains and is eventually to inherit the family farm. These stories, and virtually all others in the collection, are also markedly modern for the minimal importance of plot and the emphasis instead on theme and character.

Moore's final Irish short story collection, A Story-Teller's Holiday, is a long series of stories in two volumes that are woven together as told by an old peasant Irish storyteller to his engrossed upper-class listener. Emulating the form of the oral tradition, Moore created the collection as one long, continuous piece of work that gives evidence of Moore's capacity for creating both pathos, as in "The Nuns of Crith Gaille," and salacious humor, as in "Father Moling and the Immaculate Conception." These are all medieval tales, at times reminiscent of Boccaccio's The Decameron (1351), that show the sexual temptations of nuns and priests among those of more conventional romantic lovers. Continuing in this collection is evidence of Moore's frequent tendency—in various literary forms—to delve into the past for creative materials and of his persistent, indeed lifelong, anticlerical posture.

Some readers approaching Moore for the first time will perhaps be surprised at his versatility in short story writing, exceeding that of even Joyce; generally Joyce may give us higher quality, but Moore attempts more forms—usually succeeding in those attempts—and employs a far broader scope of subject matter, including both urban and rural perspectives on his themes.

—Alexander G. Gonzalez

See the essay on "Julia Cahill's Curse."