Moore, Edward

(1712-1757)

   He was born at Abingdon, Oxfordshire; when his clergyman father died, he was brought up by his uncle, John Moore, a schoolmaster at Bridgwater, Somerset. Edward eventually owned his own textile business in London and wrote poetry in his spare time. He was editor of the weekly The World from 1753 until it closed in 1757. The paper, whose contributors were well known society figures, satirized the vices and follies of fashionable society. He died in poverty and was buried in the South Lambeth parish graveyard without even a stone to mark the spot. He published several plays; The Foundling was staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 13 February 1747. His major poetical works are Fables for the Female Sex (1744) and Poems, Fables, and Plays (1756). Some of his poems: "Envy and Fortune," "Love and Vanity," "The Colt and the Farmer," "The Eagle and the Assembly of Birds," "The Farmer, the Spaniel, and the Cat," "The Goose and the Swans," "The Nightingale and Glow-Worm," "The Owl and the Nightingale," "The Poet and His Patron," "The Young Lion and the Ape."

   Sources: Eighteenth-Century English Verse. Dennis Davison, ed. Penguin Books, 1988. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of Bird Poetry. Peggy Munsterberg, ed. 1984. The Poetical Works of Edward Moore and David Mallet. Thomas Park, ed. J. Sharpe, 1808.