George Moore (novelist)
George Augustus Moore (February 24, 1852 - January 21, 1933) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, art critic, memorist and dramatist. Among the first English language writers to absorb the lessons of the French realists, he was also involved in the establishment of the Abbey Theatre. His short stories influenced the early writings of James Joyce.
Family background and early life
Moore was born in the family home, Moore Hall, by Lough Cara, County Mayo. The house had been built by his paternal great-grandfather, another George Moore, who had made his fortune as a wine merchant in Alicante. The novelist's grandfather, another George, was a friend of Maria Edgeworth and wrote An Historical Memoir of the French Revolution. His father, George Henry Moore (1811 – 1870) served as MP for Mayo. Renowned as a good landlord, George Henry fought for tenants' rights. He was one of the founders of the Catholic Defence Association and a leader of the Irish Brigade .
As a child, Moore enjoyed the novels of Sir Walter Scott, which his mother read to him. He spent a good deal of time outdoors with his brother Maurice. He also became friendly with the young Oscar and Willie Wilde, who spent their summer holidays at nearby Moytura.
Moore's formal education consisted of two years spent at St. Mary's College. Oscott between the ages of 14 and 16. He was expelled, 'for idleness and general worthlessness' in his own words, and returned to Mayo.
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. 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, Mallarme, Turgenev and, above all, Zola, who was to prove an influential figure in Moore's subsequent development as a writer.
In 1880, Moore was forced to return to Ireland to attend to some business affairs. While at home, 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. He then embarked on a series of novels in the realist style, the most enduring of which are, perhaps, A Mummers Wife (1885), Esther Waters (1894), and A Drama in Muslin (1886). 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). Because of his willingness to tackle such issues as extramarital sex and lesbianism in his fiction, Moore 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 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.
Dublin and the Celtic Revival
In 1901, Moore returned to Ireland to live in Dublin at the suggestion of Edward Martyn. Martin was working with Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats to establish the Irish Literary Theatre and Moore soon became deeply involved in this project and in the broader Irish Literary Revival. He had already written a play, The Strike at Arlingford (1893), which was produced by the Independent Theatre. His satirical comedy The Bending of the Bough (1900) was staged by the Irish Literary Theatre as was Diarmuid and Grania, co-written with Yeats, in 1901.
He also published two books of prose fiction set in Ireland around this time, a second book of short stories, The Untilled Field (1903) and a novel, The Lake (1905). The stories in The Untilled Field, some of which were also published in Irish translation under the title An T-ur-Gort, were influenced by Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches. They are generally recognised as the birth of the Irish short story as a literary genre and are clear forerunners of Joyce's Dubliners collection. He also published another book on art, Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters (1906). Moore remained in Dublin until 1911. He published an entertaining, gossipy, three-volume memoir of his time there under the collective title Hail and Farewell (1914).
Later life and work
Moore returned to London, where, with the exception of frequent trips to France, he was to spend the rest of his life. His books from this period include The Brook Kerith (1916) (a novel based on the supposition that Christ did not die on the cross but eventually travelled to India to learn wisdom), a further collection of short-stories called A Storyteller's Holiday (1918), a collection of essays called Conversations in Ebury Street (1924), a play, The Making of an Immortal (1927) and the novel, Aphrodite in Aulis (1930). He also rewrote many of his earlier works during this period.
Moore Hall was burnt down by anti-treaty forces in the Irish Civil War in 1923, partly because Maurice Moore had become a pro-treaty member of Seanad Éireann. Moore eventually received compensation of £7,000 from the government of the Irish Free State. By this time George and Maurice had become estranged, mainly because of the unflattering portrait of the latter in Hail and Farewell and because of Maurice's active support of the Roman Catholic church, frequently from estate funds.
He was friendly with many members of the expatriate artistic communities of London and Paris and conducted a long-lasting affair with Lady Maud Cunard. It is now believed that he was the natural father of her daughter, the well-known publisher and art patron, Nancy Cunard. Gertrude Stein mentions Moore in her The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), describing him as 'a very prosperous Mellon's Food baby'.
When Moore died he left a fortune of £80,000, but willed none of it to his brother. He was cremated in London and an urn containing his ashes was placed on an island in Lough Cara.