Publisher's Synopsis
Thomas Moore, who is now remembered only as the author of "Moore's Melodies", was the most influential Irish political writer of the first third of the 19th century.;Later generations, saturated with O'Connellite Catholic-nationalism, relegated his prose writings to oblivion - it was beyond their power to do anything about the "Melodies" - and put about the idea that he was a vain and insubstantial individual, who had succumbed to the flattery of English aristocrats. This selection of his writings shows that to be a travesty.;The trouble with Moore is that, while he did not become a tool of English aristocracy, neither did he compromise with the Catholic-nationalism of O'Connell. He was brought up amongst the Dublin United Irishmen of the 1790s, and was a friend of Robert Emmet when O'Connell was a Yeoman, and he kept on writing in the United Irish spirit to the end of his life.;In the "Memoirs of Captain Rock" a fictional biography of a whiteboy family, he relates the history of Ireland in a way that the most demanding Fenian could not quibble with.;The "Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald" is an uncompromising justification of the United Irish leader.;The "Travels Of An Irish Gentleman In Search Of A Religion" is a riposte against the Protestant propaganda of the period by somebody who detested the new, Ultramontanist, tendency in Catholicism.;This selection includes substantial extracts from these three books, along with extracts from Moore's "Journal", his "History of Ireland", and his Lives of "Sheridan" and "Byron".
