The Printer's Devil: The Life of Samuel J. Moore

by Brian Moore, Bradford Gaunce

The Printer’s Devil is a quintessential rags-to-riches story. Samuel J. Moore grew up in the slums of London’s East End during the Victorian era. By age twelve, finished with his formal education, he left England for Canada in hope for a better life. Settling in Barrie, Ontario, Moore, still a child, was forced to work to help provide for the family. Hired on at the local paper as a printer’s devil, Moore would rise from these humble beginnings to becoming a top-tier industrial titan and financier.

Moore didn’t fit the stereotype of the heartless industrial titan. He was not aggressive, exploitive, or self-serving. He was widely recognized for having an exceptional relationship with his employees — generously improving their lives and that of their families. Sam was a philanthropist, and gave tirelessly to numerous charitable causes, dedicating both time and money — incalculable on both fronts. Samuel J. Moore was a kind man and a gentle soul whose faith guided him throughout his life as he dedicated himself to the betterment of humanity.

202 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 11, 2017

About the author

Brian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”