Though his reputation has seriously waned, Moore was considered one of the preeminent poets in his day. James Joyce caricatures Moore as a ‘Firbolg in the borrowed cloak of a Milesian’ in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.1 However, Moore was a far more complex figure than this description would suggest. Born in Dublin on 28 May 1779, Moore entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1795, where he became a good classicist and politically engaged thinker, and was a close friend of Robert Emmet. Moving to London to pursue a legal career in 1799, Moore continued to write poetry and his sociable bent proved an attraction to Francis Rawdon Hastings, Earl of Moira, whose patronage hastened Moore’s literary success. Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little (1801) sold well, and he was offered the position of Irish poet laureate, but refused owing to his political beliefs. However, in 1803, he accepted the post of registrar of the naval prize court in Bermuda, travelling in North America as well as in Bermuda. On returning to England, Moore published Epistles, Odes, and other Poems (1806), which was damningly reviewed by Francis Jeffrey, a key Romantic reviewer and essayist. Though Moore challenged him to a duel, the confrontation ended in farce with both men arrested, much to the amusement of the press. Byron’s later recounting of the tale in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) earned Moore’s rage and contempt, but they became firm friends on Byron’s return from the continent, and Byron tried to suppress any later reissues of his early satire.
Moore moved back to Dublin in 1806–7 and met two composers who invited him to write his Irish Melodies. It was this series of Irish Melodies (1808–34) that caught the public’s attention, as Moore’s English recasting of Irish airs that drew on Irish history and culture found a large and sympathetic audience. Becoming involved in the theatre, even writing a play, M. P., or The Blue‐Stocking, performed in London in 1811, Moore met and married an actress, Elizabeth (Bessy) Dyke, in the same year. He continued to write successful poems, and the Intercepted Letters, or, The Twopenny Post‐Bag appeared in March 1813. John Murray and Longman competed to publish his much‐trumpeted oriental romance, Lalla Rookh; Longman prevailed, buying it for £3,000 in December 1814. Finally published in 1817, the poem rewarded Longman’s patience with Moore’s extensive rewriting and editing, and went into multiple editions over years. Despite such literary success, Moore and his wife were devastated by the death of their first child, Barbara, at the age of six in 1817; further catastrophe struck when his deputy in Bermuda absconded, leaving him £6,000 in debt. Though his satirical political poem The Fudge Family in Paris (1818) was successful, Moore could not begin to repay the debt, and he was forced to move abroad to France and Italy to escape arrest. Byron gave Moore his memoirs when the latter visited him in Italy, paving the way for Moore’s later role as Byron’s biographer. However, in 1821, Moore’s friend Lord Lansdowne managed to agree a settlement that allowed Moore to return to England, and he continued to write, publishing political satires such as Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823) and Odes upon Cash, Corn, Catholics, and other Matters (1828). Beginning as a biographer, Moore wrote Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1825), managing to present a mostly sympathetic portrait of a difficult subject. This influenced John Murray, Byron’s longstanding publisher, to offer him 4,000 guineas to publish Byron’s biography (Byron had died in 1824 in the Greek War of Independence). Byron’s memoirs were burned but Moore decided to write the biography. Moore’s final works before his death turned more political in inflection. Memoirs of Captain Rock (1824), The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1831), Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion (1833), and History of Ireland (1835–46) reveal the depths of Moore’s Irish patriotism. Suffering from senile dementia, Moore died on 25 February 1852, survived by his wife.
Geoffrey Carnall, ‘Moore, Thomas (1779–1852)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, September 2013 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19150, accessed 6 September 2015]; Thomas Moore (1779–1852): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/19150.