Thomas Moore Add a review

Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852), was an Irish poet, writer, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies, which contains works such as The Minstrel Boy (1813) and The Last Rose of Summer (1805). As one of the most cherished poets of the English Romantic era, his poems and ballads, which were among the most popular in 19th-century Irish literature, were noted for their depictions of Catholic Emancipation, and his setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked a major transition in popular culture from Irish to English. Moore is best known for his 1817 chivalric romance Lalla Rookh, a classic of Oriental poetry which has been adapted for orchestral compositions by Charles Villiers Stanford, Anton Rubinstein, and Robert Schumann.

Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation, Moore was seen to defend the tradition of the Catholic Church in Ireland against both, the evangelising Protestants as well as the uncompromising lay Catholics. His later prose works reveal more radical sympathies, with an example being his work, The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, which depicted the United Irish leader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform.

Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot. He is also thought to have played a role in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron.