Mike Fletcher

by George Moore

George Augustus Moore (1852-1933) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. His first book, a collection of poems called The Flowers of Passion, had appeared in 1878 and a second collection, Pagan Poems, followed in 1881. His first novel, A Modern Lover (1883), was banned in England because of its, for the times, explicit portrayal of the amorous pursuits of its hero. His next book, A Mummer's Wife (1885) is widely recognized as the first major novel in the realist style in the English language. Other realist novels by Moore from this period include Esther Waters (1894), the story of an unmarried housemaid who becomes pregnant and is abandoned by her footman lover, and A Drama in Muslin (1886), a satiric story of the marriage trade in Anglo-Irish society. His 1887 novel A Mere Accident is an attempt to merge his symbolist and realist influences. He also published a collection of short Celibates (1895). In 1913, he traveled to Jerusalem to research background for his novel The Brook A Syrian Story (1916).

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1889

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.

Reviews

[Ratatoskr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always feel so self-congratulatory (although I haven't done anything) when I discover an enjoyable novel by an author whose star has faded. It's like finding buried treasure. I came across this author through his associations with Symbolism and the Celtic Revival but was a little wary when I read that Moore was considered a Naturalist. I was worried that this 1889 work, Mike Fletcher, would be unrelentingly dreary, a Thomas Hardy kind of thing, and I could find almost nothing about it on the internet. I needn't have worried. It has it's tragic elements to be sure, but the tragedy is well leavened with humor, and there are sentences that easily could have been written by Thackeray, Austen, Wilde or Waugh ("The morals and manners of an English county are determined by its female population. If the number of females is large, manners are familiar, and morals are lax; if the number is small, manners are reserved, and morals severe." or "'My mother will not hear of it; she would sooner see me dead than married to you.' 'Why?' 'She knows you are an atheist for one thing.' 'But she does not know that I have six thousand a year.'"). It is essentially a late-19th century Rake's Progress, a La Boheme as farce. While I suppose the descriptions of dissipation might have been shocking to some Victorian readers, it is essentially a throwback to picaresque tales with the occasional digression into Romantic angsty philosophizing and hothouse Symbolist descriptions, although this is never laid on too thickly ("Since I became a student of Schopenhauer I have given up waltzing. Now I never indulge in anything but a square."). Front and center is the character of Mike himself, the cad whom women can't resist ("call it magnetism, electro-biology, give it what name you will.") who has the potential to be anyone and no one. Of great interest are his relationships with his friends Frank and John, the kind of close relationships one makes in youth and think will never end and yet are made between people who differ so much in character that they can't help but drift apart but always with regret. Female characters are given less play, not surprising considering their role in the main character's life, but a couple are quite strong secondary figures and reading descriptions of some of Moore's other works, he clearly doesn't neglect them elsewhere. I'm looking forward with anticipation to delving into some of those other works.