Narrative

Thomas Moore

15. Thomas Moore was born on May 28, 1779 in Dublin, Ireland. Most often remembered for composing the lyrics to the Irish songs “The Minstrel Boy” and “The Last Rose of Summer,” Moore was a poet, prose writer, biographer, and performer. After leaving Trinity College, Dublin in 1799, he travelled to London with the intention of studying law. In 1800, he translated odes attributed to the Greek poet Anacreon and dedicated them to the Prince of Wales. In the following year, he wrote a collection of juvenile love poems, entitled The Poetical Works of Thomas Little Esq. (1801). After obtaining a government posting in Bermuda in 1803 and appointing a deputy to take his place, Moore travelled across Canada and the Eastern United States. Upon returning to England, he recorded his views on America in Epistles, Odes; and Other Poems (1806). In the following years, Moore composed a number of poetic and prose works, including an orientalist metrical romance in 1814, entitled Lalla Rookh and his first novel, The Fudge Family in Paris (1818). He was later able to build on his reputation as a novelist and capitalize on the initial popularity of The Fudge Family in Paris with a successful sequel in 1835, entitled The Fudge Family in England. This volume of The Pocket Magazine of Classic and Polite Literature (v.3: 1819) features engravings based on Moore’s Poems.