Thomas Moore
born May 28, 1779, Dublin, Ire.
died Feb. 25, 1852, Wiltshire, Eng.
Irish poet, satirist, composer, and political
propagandist. He was a close friend of Lord
Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The son of a Roman Catholic wine merchant,
Moore graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in
1799 and then studied law in London. His major
poetic work, Irish Melodies (1807–34), earned
him an income of £500 annually for a quarter of
a century. It contained such titles as The Last
Rose of Summer and Oft in the Stilly Night. The
Melodies, a group of 130 poems set to the music
of Moore and of Sir John Stevenson and performed
for London’s aristocracy, aroused sympathy and
support for the Irish nationalists, among whom
Moore was a popular hero.
Lalla Rookh (1817), a narrative poem set (on
Byron’s advice) in an atmosphere of Oriental
splendour, gave Moore a reputation among his
contemporaries rivaling that of Byron and Sir
Walter Scott. It was perhaps the most translated
poem of its time, and it earned what was till
then the highest price paid by an English
publisher for a poem (£3,000). Moore’s many
satirical works, such as The Fudge Family in
Paris (1818), portray the politics and manners
of the Regency period.
In 1824 Moore became a participant in one of
the most celebrated episodes of the Romantic
period. He was the recipient of Byron’s memoirs,
but he and the publisher John Murray burned
them, presumably to protect Byron. Moore later
brought out the Letters and Journals of Lord
Byron (1830), in which he included a life of the
poet. Moore’s lifelong espousal of the Catholic
cause led him to produce such brilliant works as
his parody of agrarian insurgency, The Memoirs
of Captain Rock (1824), and his courageous
biography of the revolutionary leader of the
1798 rebellion, The Life and Death of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald (1831).
