Throughout his professional life, the poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was variously celebrated and vilified for both his verse and his politics. Born in Dublin, he remained an ardent Irish patriot until his death. This eight-volume collection of Moore's memoirs, diaries and letters, edited by his friend Lord John Russell (1792–1878) and first published between 1853 and 1856, provides rare insights into a man whose genius was applauded by the Morning Chronicle as 'embracing almost all sides of imaginative literature, of criticism and philosophy'. Volume 2 opens with a portrait of his friend and patron Lord Moira and a view of Bermuda, where Moore spent a brief period in 1803–4. The volume covers the period 1814–18, during which time the poet wrote one of his most profitable publications, Lalla Rookh, and bought his Wiltshire home, Sloperton Cottage, where he would spend his final years.
