An Anthology of Pure Poetry

by George Moore

In a conversation with Walter de la Mare and another friend (reproduced in the Introduction) George Moore, the Anglo-Irish novelist and man of letters, proposed "an anthology of pure poetry, the only one lacking on the book stalls." Almost fifty years since the anthology's first appearance, it is still the only such one ever attempted. By "pure poetry" Moore meant lasting objects of verbal beauty and imagination that serve no purpose other than poetic enjoyment. Thus this delightful book of selections from both familiar and surprising sources―among others, Ben Jonson, Blake, Tennyson, Poe Walter Savage Landor, and Swinburne.

187 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 1973

About the author

George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day.

As a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola. His writings influenced James Joyce, according to the literary critic and biographer Richard Ellmann, and, although Moore's work is sometimes seen as outside the mainstream of both Irish and British literature, he is as often regarded as the first great modern Irish novelist.