Background
Thomas Moore was born on May 28, 1779, in Dublin, Ireland. His background might be called lower middle class today; his father, John Moore, was a shoemaker and grocer and later the manager of an army barracks.
Thomas Moore was born on May 28, 1779, in Dublin, Ireland. His background might be called lower middle class today; his father, John Moore, was a shoemaker and grocer and later the manager of an army barracks.
His mother, Anastasia Codd Moore, had a strong interest in the arts, and young Thomas was placed in Dublin's top private schools, including (from 1786) the English Grammar School, considered the best in the city, and later Dr. Carr's Latin School, which prepared him for a university education.
He was a top-notch student who had his first poems published in the Dublin magazine Anthologia Hibernica in 1793 when he as just 14.
His application at Trinity College ranked high among those of incoming students, but he was ineligible to receive a scholarship for which he otherwise would have qualified, and his father had to pay his tuition.
He received a bachelor's degree in 1799, by which time he had already begun his translation of the Odes of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon.
But it is the Irish Melodies, which appeared between 1807 and 1835, for which Moore remains best known today.
They include such evergreen melodies as “The Last Rose of Summer, ” “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, ” and “The Minstrel Boy. ”
At Trinity, Moore became friends with two other Irish students, Robert Emmett and Edward Hudson, who became leaders in a 1798 rebellion against English rule.
His translation was published in 1800 and sold well.
He settled on a career as a writer but rejected the title of Irish Poet Laureate, arranged for him by an influential friend, because he felt it would cramp his ability to express controversial political ideas.
He sailed for the New World in the fall of 1803, arriving in 1804 via Norfolk, Virginia.
Both books contained romantic passages that by the standards of the time were considered risqué.
The worst came from Francis Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review.
In the United States, Moore's Irish Melodies inspired a whole tradition of Irish-flavored melodies running through the works of Stephen Foster (whose “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” strongly resembles Moore's compositions) and beyond. Moore's 124 melodies contained 40 about love, 30 about Ireland, 15 about wine and friendship, 20 on miscellaneous life topics, 10 on people and events of the times, 6 about nature, and 6 on autobiographical topics (some of which overlapped with other categories).
For the rest of his life he lived in England, not Ireland.
The poem was hailed by British travelers for its realistic depictions of life in the Middle East, but for Irish readers it carried overtones of Ireland's long struggle against Great Britain.
Rather than allow friends to help, Moore fled England and spent three years in Paris. In 1813 Moore published the first in a series of satirical books, Intercepted Letters, or, The Twopenny Post Bag.
He followed that up with tales of the perambulations of a fictitious Fudge Family that allowed him to focus on whatever targets he chose at a given time.
An example was 1818's The Fudge Family in Paris.
He continued to issue satirical works such as Odes upon Cash, Corn, Catholics, and Other Matters (1828).
Moore took up the cause of Irish peasants directly in 1824 with a prose story called Memoirs of Captain Rock, a satirical work in which he created a Robin Hood-like Irish folk hero who takes the side of peasants against their landlord.
Moore continued to write new Irish Melodies and also began new musical collections of National Airs and Sacred Songs.
He reflected on his own Catholic faith in his 1833 book Travels of an Irish Gentlemen in Search of a Religion. In addition to the Fitzgerald work he wrote a biography of the 18th-century comic playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Life of Sheridan, 1825), and, in 1830, Life of Byron, about the British poet George Gordon, Lord Byron.
Moore was uniquely situated to write a biography of Byron because he had been in possession of the poet's letters, but he is thought to have burned those letters because of their controversial content.
Moore is considered one of England's greatest literary biographers. In later life, Moore worked on a giant History of Ireland that remained unfinished at his death.
In 1841 he issued a collection of his own works in ten volumes, writing an autobiographical preface to each volume.
He outlived all five of his children, several of whom died young; his son Thomas lived a dissolute life and died in Africa in 1845.
Moore himself did not see Ireland after 1838.
New editions of the Irish Melodies continued to appear throughout the nineteenth century, and they were translated into languages as distant as Hungarian, Polish, and Russian.
Despite his academic accomplishments, Moore faced discrimination as a Catholic in a British and Protestant controlled Ireland.
His output ranged from epic poetry to satire, and he was an energetic writer of prose who authored the first major biographies of several important figures of nineteenth-century literature and politics.
Quotes from others about the person
In the words of The Contemplator Web site, “Thomas Moore's work popularized Irish music throughout the world. ”
In 1811 Moore married a charming young Irish actress, Elizabeth ("Bessy") Dyke; their happy union was saddened by the fact that all the Moore children died during the lifetime of their parents.