GEORGE MOORE, 1852-1933

An authoritative, exhaustively complete biography of George Moore, the Anglo-Irish novelist, poet, and playwright whose career spanned the end of the Victorian era and the rise of Modernism.

Frazier (English/Union Coll.) notes that Moore realized that “the canon of English fiction for his era would have room for no more than three novelists,” and that he was unlikely to be categorized with James, Hardy, or Conrad as one of the major authors of the age. Nonetheless, Moore’s career is intriguing for students of the development of the novel and devotees of the fin-de-siècle period. Moore participated in each successive literary trend between 1874 (when he published his first play) and 1833 (the year of his death); he at various times embraced naturalism (in his early novels A Mummer’s Wife and Esther Waters), stream-of-consciousness (in The Lake), Irish nationalism, and lyric “pure verse,” frequently provoking controversy with his psychologically complex and sexually explicit fiction. Moore mingled with Manet and Degas during a youthful sojourn in Paris, and he worked with Yeats and Lady Gregory to found the Irish Literary Theatre. Frazier’s descriptions of the sophisticated but still prim art studios of Paris in the 1870s, and the overheated political and erotic atmosphere of literary Dublin in 1900 are as memorable as Moore’s fiction. He describes the glamorous women in Moore’s life (there were many) with relish, always substantiating his statements with impressive documentation. However, the material that makes this the definitive literary biography of Moore also makes it rough going for the general reader. Lengthy analyses of Moore’s fiction interrupt the narrative, and accounts of Moore’s interactions with his (admittedly distinguished) acquaintances and love-objects are painfully detailed. The biography is bogged down by minutiae, fascinating for serious scholars of Moore but of dubious interest for anyone else.

Invaluable for admirers of Moore’s work; reasonably engaging (with some judicious skimming) for more casual readers. (b&w photos, illustrations)