Publisher's Synopsis
Thomas Moore, who wrote The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose Of Summer amongst other things, is a name without associations in present-day Ireland. The songs are familiar, but the man is unknown.;One expects to find him an inoffensive, pious, sentimental, uninteresting person, with a knack for putting words to tunes. The truth is surprising. The first Catholic admitted to Trinity College, the close friend of Robert Emmet, contributor to the United Irish newspaper, he achieved literary fame in England without sacrifice of integrity.;He achieved fame through the "Melodies", notoriety through his erotic verse, and English literary immortality through his association with, and biography of, Byron. The "Edinburgh Review" denounced him as a menace to the moral fibre of Britain. At the height of his English fame he wrote a defence of agrarian terrorism in Ireland. He was the first modern Irish historian and remains one of the best, though his writings are unknown.;He opposed the resurgence of intolerant Catholicism, and refused to endorse O'Connell's Catholic-nationalism. His nation was that envisaged by the United Irishmen. He had no time for O'Connell's nation - and O'Connell's nation has had no time for him. But the direction of development in Ireland has changed recently. And there is no major literary figure of the past who is so much in tune with the new spirit as Moore. This volume consists of a biography and a cross-section of the poems: patriotic, political, sentimental, erotic, philosophical - and readable.
