Moore, George
MOORE, GEORGE (1853- ), Irish novelist and poet, was born in Ireland, son of George Henry Moore, M.P., a wellknown orator and politician. He studied art in London and finished his education in Paris. He was a regular contributor to various London magazines when he published his first volume, in verse, The Flowers of Passion (1877). A second, Pagan Poems, appeared in 1881. As a novelist he followed the French school of Flaubert and Zola, and became prominent for deliberate realism. His powerful Mummer's Wife (1885) had decidedly repulsive elements. But Zolaism meanwhile was a thing to which the reading public was gradually becoming acclimatized. George Moore's Esther Waters (1894), a strong story with an anti-gambling motive, had a more general success, and was followed by Evelyn Innes (1898), a novel of musical life, and its sequel, Sister Teresa (1901). He interested himself in the Irish Gaelic revival, and was one of the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre. His play, The Strike at Arlingford (three acts, in prose, 1893), was written for the Independent Theatre, and his satirical comedy, The Bending of the Bough (1900), dealing with Irish local affairs, was played by the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin. His Diarmuid and Crania, written with Mr. W. B. Yeats, was produced by Mr. F. R. Benson's company at the same theatre in 1901. The Unfilled Field (1903) and The Lake (1905) are romantic pictures of Irish life. Moore had originally come to the front in London about 1888 as an art critic, and his published work in that line includes Impressions and Opinions (1891) and Modern Painting (1893, 2nd ed., 1897). Among his other books are A Drama in Muslin, (1886), A Mere Accident (1887), Parnell and His Island (1887), Mike Fletcher (1887), Spring Days (1888), Vain Fortune (1890), Celibates (1895), Confessions of a Young Man (1888), and Memoirs of My Dead Life (1906).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
