Description

Throughout his professional life, the poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852) was variously celebrated and vilified for both his verse and his politics. Born in Dublin, he remained an ardent Irish patriot until his death. This eight-volume collection of Moore's memoirs, diaries and letters, edited by his friend Lord John Russell (1792-1878) and first published between 1853 and 1856, provides rare insights into a man whose genius was applauded by the Morning Chronicle as 'embracing almost all sides of imaginative literature, of criticism and philosophy'. Volume 2 opens with a portrait of his friend and patron Lord Moira and a view of Bermuda, where Moore spent a brief period in 1803-4. The volume covers the period 1814-18, during which time the poet wrote one of his most profitable publications, Lalla Rookh, and bought his Wiltshire home, Sloperton Cottage, where he would spend his final years.