News | George Moore Assoc.

George Moore: Back in Dublin Again.

Registration for the 21st March seminar opened on 25th February.

We are delighted to invite you to this event that, courtesy of the NCFIS and TU Dublin. It will start at 10am in TU Dublin building at Aungier Street, and will present a most varied programme from then until closing before 5pm.

Programme for 21st March

10am Welcome

10.10- 10.55: ‘Three Georges: a Catholic, a Sceptic, a Mystic.’

Chair: Dr Kathryn Laing

Dr Eamon Maher (TU Dublin): “Priestly Fictions in the Two Georges: Moore and

Bernanos”

Michael McKernan (AE Society): “George Moore and AE – Two Dublin Friends”

10.55-11.10: coffee

11.10- 12.10: ‘Women, GM, & a Zeitgeist ?’

Chair: Prof Adrian Frazier

Dr Annachiara Cozzi (Università di Pavia): “Uncharted Connections : George Moore and

Somerville & Ross”

Claudia Sterbini( University of Edinburgh) : “Nonsexuality and ‘The Real Demi-Vierge’:

George Moore’s ‘John Norton’ (1895) as a Sexological Case Study”

Barbara Kavanagh (TU Dublin): “Championing Women: The Possible Influence of George

Moore on John McGahern”

12.10-12.25:

The Characters and the Cast 1

Prof Liam MacMathúna:

“The Tinker and the Fairy: Douglas Hyde and George

Moore Play New Parts”

12.30 – 1.30: Lunch Break

1.30- 1.40:

The Characters and the Cast 2

Dr Brian A Murphy (TU Dublin):

“Sinéad de Valera : from Hyde’s Fairy to George

Moore’s Rejection, Ireland’s First Lady and Friend of JFK”.

1.40-2.10: Douglas Hyde’s play, The Tinker and the Fairy,

A Rehearsed Reading, by

Úna Florent & Kyle Andrew Laing (TU Dublin B.A. (Hons) in Drama (Performance))

and Andrea Basquille (TU Dublin Drama lecturer).

The reading will be followed by a short musical excerpt from the opera The Tinker

and the Fairy by Michele Esposito who provided incidental music for the play’s

original performance in 1902. Violinist: Kevin O’Loughlin (UCD Ad Astra Scholar).

2.15-3pm: ‘George Moore and his Music’

Kevin O’Loughlin, violinist (UCD Ad Astra Scholar) will present a varied programme

of music connected with George Moore. The recital will include pieces by Mozart,

Beethoven, Debussy, Esposito, Elgar, and Holst. Linking notes by Dr Mary Pierse.

3.00-3.45: Images of Dublin

Chair: tbc

Dr Brendan Fleming: “A Tale of the Second City: How Dublin Informs George Moore's

'Albert Nobbs' ”

Dr Daniel Mulhall: “Revivalist Dublin Revisited: Moore, Yeats and AE”.

4pm: George Moore: à demain?

Chair: Prof Adrian Frazier

Open participation and reactions.

4.30: Close

Practical Information:

The day is open to all GM enthusiasts and to the general public. We just ask you to register your interest at georgemooreassociation@gmail.com as soon as possible.

There will be no entry charge. There will be donation boxes at the venue and we will rely on your generosity (perhaps an amount similar to what you might pay for a film, a lecture, a recital would be appropriate for the day’s enjoyment and enlightenment). We need your support so that we may continue to promote study of Moore’s writing and to assist young scholars. Donations may be by cash or cheque on the day.

As we have mentioned before, the venue at TU Dublin, Aungier Street is adjacent to Whitefriar Street church, it is very well served by many bus routes from north and south of the city, and is a mere short walk from St. Stephen’s Green. There are several cafés in the area.

There will also be membership forms available on 21st March so that you can join the George Moore Association and perhaps encourage others to do so too.

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Moore Hall

Moore Hall is situated between Claremorris and Ballinrobe, on the shores of Lough Carra in Muckloon townland. Home to generations of Moores, the house is a ‘Big House’ which was built to impress by George Moore, great-grandfather of renowned novelist, dramatist and cultural activist, George Augustus Moore (1852-1933).

Built out of the spoils of the elder Moore’s lucrative wine business in the 1790s, it became home to generations of high-achieving Moores, from George Augustus’ great-uncle John who, in 1798 was dubbed ‘President of Connacht’ by General Humbert after the Rebellion, to his own father, George Henry, renowned for his good works, advocacy and service as an MP in the British Parliament. Known as a fair landlord (a rare moniker in those times) he used his gambling fortune to provide food and cattle for his tenants during the famine (when Mayo was badly stricken). George Henry was a defender of the rights of Catholic farmers. A memorial on the grounds of Moore Hall reads:

Burial Place of the Moores of Moore Hall

This Catholic Patriot family is honoured for their famine relief and their refusal to barter principles for English gold.

The most famous of the Moores, George Augustus Moore, is seen by some as the first great modern novelist and he played an important role in the Celtic Literary Revival, an important political and cultural movement, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Moore, together with W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn created the Irish Literary Theatre (precursor to the Abbey Theatre), whose mission it was to provide a theatre for Irish plays. Highly accomplished and somewhat the enfant terrible, Moore’s stint in Paris had him rubbing shoulders with the likes of Pissarro, Degas, Renoir and Monet. But it was Emile Zola who made the greatest impact on Moore’s development. A prolific writer and cultural activist, his influence spread far and wide and portraits of him by Manet, Degas, Orpen and Yeats adorn the walls of collectors and galleries around the world.

The house is situated between Claremorris and Ballinrobe, on the shores of Lough Carra in Muckloon townland, a location which was considered unlucky by locals when it was built, as it was supposed to have been the site of the ancient slaying of the King of Connacht’s Druid, Drithliu, around 400 A.D. Architect John Roberts, who built Waterford Cathedral and Tyrone House in Galway, designed the house, taking care to align the house with the lake to offer the best possible panoramic views over Lough Carra. George Moore and Oscar Wilde undoubtedly had lively conversations on that lakeshore during the months when the Wilde family came to their nearby summerhouse, Moytura House.The estate was owned by the Moore Family until it was burnt down during the Civil War in 1923. Being a “Big House” it succumbed to the rebels, more for what it symbolised than for its history.

Today, owned by the State, Moore Hall is a shadow of its former glory and its tenants now, less celebrated, extend to the Lesser Horseshoe Bat. The grounds have a lovely looped walk which takes you through the woods surrounding the house, though the house is not accessible to the public. The glassy stillness of Lough Carra is a pleasure at any time, but as you walk through the woods and imagine the passionate conversations and heated debates which must have taken place in the house through generations of turbulent and challenging times in Irish history, not only among the Moore family themselves, but among their many accomplished and influential visitors, including St. John Gogarty, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, Maria Edgeworth and W.B. Yeats, one cannot help but wish that the trees could talk and imagine what wonderful things they might say.