Thomas Moore

No poet has fallen so far from fame than the Irishman Thomas Moore. In his time no poet had risen faster: born in humble circumstances in Dublin, his gift for sparkling verse and talent for touching the nerves of his audience saw him cross the water to London and become the toast, and scourge, of his age. Perhaps the trajectory of this rise has contributed to his subsequent neglect, but he was no short-lived literary firework; in a long and extraordinarily productive career Moore gained an international reach beyond any other Romantic poet save perhaps his friend Lord Byron (1788-1824), to whose lustre Moore himself added with a fine biography. Which project should remind us of the enormous range of his achievements: more than just a poet, Moore was a brilliant satirist, a painstaking historian, an intuitive biographer, a gifted musician and performer, a polemical patriot, and even a novelist of talent. If he is perhaps chiefly remembered in footnotes to the novels of James Joyce, at least thereby he is paid a lasting tribute from one Dubliner to another. This chapter gives a comprehensive introduction to his life and work, concentrating on his accomplishments in poetry and music