George Moore: 132 books

George Moore was an Irish novelist whose works were best known for their realism. In turn, he helped influence subsequent writers like James Joyce and other naturalists.

George Moore was an Irish novelist whose works were best known for their realism. In turn, he helped influence subsequent writers like James Joyce and other naturalists.

Published in 1891, this volume is a gathering of Moore’s previously published articles, largely revised or rewritten for the book’s publication. Moore offers incisive commentary and insights on such artists as Balzac, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Degas, and proves to be a formidable art critic in a collection that the New York Times lauded as “fascinating.”

This novel (1888) tells the story of three spoiled daughters who are a great source of grief and distress to their parents. Moore later called the book the worst book he’d ever written, and it was omitted from the lists of his acknowledged works. Twenty-five years later, however, at the urging of friends...

In these short stories, Moore affectionately depicts authentic scenes of Irish rural life. Moore originally penned them for translation into Irish as part of the Irish Renaissance movement. The stories, which focus on the themes of Church oppression, poverty, and emigration, have been praised as the first Irish short stories and forerunners to Joyce’s Dubliners.

Hailed by Yeats as a masterpiece, this 1886 novel sheds light on the Anglo-Irish marriage market. Moore offers a satiric yet sympathetic look at five unmarried daughters of the Anglo-Irish gentry and details their desperate antics to locate suitable husbands. Written with vivid and rich attention to...

Published in 1906, this first volume of Moore's memoirs scandalized with its frank approach to sex and sensuality.  In these pages is a loving evocation of women and cities loved and lost, of emotions as deeply felt as they proved to be evanescent. 

In this semi-autobiographical work, published in 1881, Moore details his years as a struggling artist in Paris and London. The volume relates bohemian life in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s, and is one of the first English books to introduce many of the French Impressionist artists who are known today as giants in the field.

Moore wrote about The Lake that readers, “will learn how the Irish priest lives in single strictness, how he sometimes flies from it or takes to drink.” The novella concerns an Irish priest named Father Oliver Gogarty who is tormented by his unkind treatment of an unmarried pregnant woman who leaves...

This 1917 novel tells the tale of a handsome, struggling artist who carelessly manipulates women for his own advantage—including Lady Helen Seely, the rich and beautiful aristocrat whom he seduces and marries. The novel is a rewriting of Moore’s first novel, A Modern Lover, which was banned from...

Considered to be Moore’s masterwork, Esther Waters is a poignant portrayal of a religious girl sent out to service, only to be seduced by a fellow employee and then abandoned after she becomes pregnant. Determined to raise her child, Esther faces many hardships in her quest to provide for herself and her son. Both moving and memorable, Esther Waters is a classic of realist fiction.

In this haunting volume of three novella-length stories, Moore explores three characters, each drawn into a life of celibacy. The book features Mildred Lawson, the pretty but selfish woman who is plagued by the worry that her husband married her for money alone; John Norton, a would-be monk who finds...

This 1884 novel examines the life of a woman seduced away from her invalid husband by a member of an operetta troupe. Moore’s unwavering account of the protagonist’s descent into alcoholism—causing her to do unthinkable things—was too brutal, however, for readers of the time. One critic wrote,...

The story follows a young man named Dayne mirroring author's own life experiences in bohemian art scene of emerging Parisian impressionism. These true confessions are often described as the most significant documents of the passionate revolt of English literature against the Victorian tradition. It...