In George Moore: Spheres of Influence, editors Kathryn Laing and Mary Pierse explore the literary worlds inhabited by the pioneering Irish author George Moore (1852–1933). With an eye to Moore’s innovative embrace of visual art, feminism and literary history, this newly published volume investigates the writer’s influences and inventive strategies in novel, short story and memoir.
In this blog post, Laing and Pierse delve into what George Moore believed in, where his influences stemmed from, and why the writer was a trailblazer ahead of his time in both the literary world and wider spheres.
George Moore, often better known as GM, still needs introduction to a wider public. Born in Carnacun, near Claremorris, Co. Mayo in 1852, the eldest son of Irish party MP George Henry Moore, he spent significant periods of his life in Paris and Dublin, and died in London in 1933 – and the importance of each of those locations resounds repeatedly in his writings. He was the author of a truly massive oeuvre: sixty-five book titles including prose, drama and early poetry. It has always been widely accepted that George Moore, visual art disciple and discriminating art critic, was to a great degree responsible for popularising the Impressionists’ art in Britain. Literary historians credit him with playing the key role in bringing French literary modernism to English readers, especially in the 1880s and 1890s. In light of his acknowledged excellence and ground-breaking achievements, why is his name is less-widely recognised than those of other Irish writers? The story is interesting and can be understood in the context of prejudice, prurience and scandals of a Victorian past in Ireland (and in Britain) and the pressure of life in early independent Ireland.
Many social, literary, historical, psychological and artistic grounds influence the reception and acknowledgment of GM’s work. He does not fit any country’s confining literary formats or categories; he resolutely refused limitation. He constantly changed his focus and interest, altered his style, and was often far ahead of prevailing taste: his incorporation of elements of French naturalistic technique were too graphic and explicit for many readers of English novels in the late-nineteenth century; the pared realism of his short stories was too near to the bone for Irish readers of the Irish literary revival period; his immensely popular ‘bible’ story, The Brook Kerith (1915) scandalised many Christians and enthused others. Moore was not a typical Irish nationalist although he was eagerly involved in many aspects of literary revival production and after a brief, unsuccessful attempt to learn Irish, ‘Seorsa Ó Mórdha’ enthusiastically ensured publication of An tÚr-Ghort before its appearance as The Untilled Field. Neither was GM an ‘English’ novelist, being very hostile to the humorous and fireside amateurishness of much popular, post-Dickens, English fiction. Like his childhood friend, Oscar Wilde, GM was loudly articulate on the subject of English hypocrisy.
George Moore was influenced by his residence in France in the 1870s when he became friends with Degas and Manet, and where he initiated a collaboration with Zola in international naturalism. From that time on, GM was always more of a European artist than one identifiably limited to one geographical or literary heritage. He wanted to be recognised for the quality of his work, but only so long as he did not have to compromise with the public. So, just as the English often regarded Moore as never quite respectable (too French, too Irish, too Catholic, and too daring), bourgeois Ireland followed that pattern, with the belief that Moore was not considered sufficiently Irish or Catholic. Literary envy and jealousy also played a part in influencing how his persona and oeuvre would be viewed.
However, Moore has not been a ‘neglected’ writer during the past twenty years: several monographs and many articles have been published on his work; several volumes of his prose are currently in print, and some have never been out of print for more than a century; a Hollywood movie starring Glenn Close, and with script by John Banville, was made of Moore’s widely-acclaimed story Albert Nobbs; there have been eleven international conferences and literary celebrations, leading to several collections of critical essays.
The latest critical volume, George Moore: Spheres of Influence (2023) continues to interrogate, speculate and to inform readers. In total, the critical volumes have a breadth of study, encompassing French influences, visual art, music, gender studies, politics, classical Greek literature, biblical study, family history, religion and comparative literary examination. Dissertations on him and on his writings continue to be written in England, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Brazil and the USA. A significant stimulus to this output was provided by Adrian Frazier’s George Moore 1852-1933 (2000), a seminal work that offers a most entertaining guide to Moorian texts and contexts, one with appeal for both the general reader and scholars.
George Moore is certainly pertinent today. GM always asserted that human sexuality is a matter of boundless complexity, and hence that normative expectations of individuals can prove very cruel; he believed marriage, or at least nineteenth-century marriage, was an institution in which many could not find a happy home. GM was a visionary of a post-national phase of civilisation, believing that nations often demand too much compliance and thereby diminish the development of personality and freedom. Each of those attitudes displayed considerable honesty and prescience.
On the literary and artistic front, Moore’s highly original development of autobiographical narrative, memoir, and personal essay writing resulted in forms that satisfy the reader’s hunger for reality. As a correspondent, GM was prolific, whether with publishers, producers, family, friends, acquaintances, or literary collaborators. That latter category included significant numbers of women (from Olive Schreiner and Eleanor Marx on) and his relationships with women were complex and interesting. Although an abstemious drinker, his generous Dublin hospitality, complete with wine and cigars, was much sought after. As for his religious beliefs, his core philosophy prioritised personal conscience and abhorred “the deadly fingers of the Ecclesiastic”. When scrutinised closely rather than through the prism of artistic envy or rivalry, the portrait of Moore reveals a man of keen intelligence, dignity and integrity. It is a profile that provides a vital and authoritative counterbalance to negative personal assessments and to oft-repeated, simplistic jibes. John Butler Yeats described Moore’s as “the most stimulating mind I ever met”; Virginia Woolf decided that he was “great”.
While at various times George Moore was condemned for honesty, innovation and daring, those very qualities are likely to be appreciated today and he can now be embraced as a trailblazer. A forerunner of modern Irish writers like Wilde, Synge and Joyce, GM’s literary achievements are extraordinary, and extend geographically from Moore Hall in Mayo to the Shelbourne Hotel and Ely Place in Dublin, and thence to Pigalle and Chelsea, with multiple digressions via Bayreuth, Sussex and elsewhere. In Confessions of a Young Man, A Mummer’s Wife, A Drama in Muslin, Esther Waters, The Untilled Field, The Brook Kerith, Hail and Farewell and his other writings, his writing can tantalise, inspire or enlighten, and his work certainly merits re-discovery.
George Moore: Spheres of Influence is available to purchase now from our website in hardback or e-book.
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