The Literary Relationship of Lord Byron & Thomas Moore

Abstract

Contradicting the popular perception that Percy Bysshe Shelley was the poet who exerted the most influence upon Lord Byron's work, Jeffery W. Vail demonstrates that close friend and biographer Thomas Moore was a larger presence in Byron's life and work than any other living writer. In this analysis, Vail reconstructs the social, political and literary contexts of both writers' works through extensive consultation of 19th-century sources - including hundreds of contemporary reviews and articles on the two writers and over 500 unpublished manuscript letters written by Moore. Beginning with Byron's youthful attempts to imitate Moore's early erotic lyrics, Vail analyzes the impact of Moore's lyric poems, satires and songs upon Byron's works. He then examines Byron's influence on Moore, especially in Moore's Orientalist and narrative poems written after 1816. After the news of Byron's death reached England in 1824, Moore battled with Byron's friends and relatives over the fate of Byron's memoirs, earlier entrusted to Moore. Although Moore was forced to allow the memoirs to be destroyed, he made amends by producing the voluminous and psychologically acute biography that helped to establish and guard his friend's legacy. This study seeks to improve our modern understanding of Byron's life and work, and to resurrect Moore as a subject of serious critical inquiry.