The Lake

by George Moore

The Lake Cover

“The accident that turns one into the road is only the means which Providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends. Accidents are many: life is as full of accidents as a fire is full of sparks…”

Set in the author’s native Ireland, this poignant and poetic novel (first published in 1905) delves deeply into one man’s troubled soul.

From the outside Father Oliver seems to lead a peaceful existence. But since the disappearance of Nora Glynn, the former schoolmistress, his inner world has been in turmoil.

Not knowing what has happened to her, and unable to stop blaming himself, he spends his days avoiding his parishioners and taking long, lonely walks by the lake.

Until one day a letter arrives, a correspondence begins, and Father Oliver is forced to reassess his life, his faith and, perhaps most importantly of all, his future….

Title: The Lake

Author: George Moore

ISBN: 978-1-907245-02-2

Category: Fiction

Pages: 180

RRP: £7.99

Published: September, 2009

George Augustus Moore (1852-1933) was born in County Mayo, Ireland, the eldest son of a wealthy landed family. After a desultory education, which ended in expulsion from his English boarding school, he decided to pursue an artistic career. His father’s death in 1870 left him financially independent, and shortly afterwards he moved to Paris to study painting. While there he mixed freely in bohemian circles, coming under the influence of Monet, Renoir, Mallarme, Zola and other leading lights of French culture.

In 1880, Moore returned to Ireland and decided to give up painting for literature. He moved to London and published his first book, A Modern Lover (1883), which was immediately banned by the circulating libraries. This was followed by other novels in the French ‘realist’ tradition, including A Mummer’s Wife (1885), Esther Waters (1894), Evelyn Innes (1898) and Sister Teresa (1901).

In 1901, Moore left London for Dublin and became an important figure in the Irish Revival. Together with W. B. Yeats, he became heavily involved in the planning of what was to become the Abbey Theatre, a period which he later recorded in Hail and Farewell. In 1903 he published his first collection of short stories, The Untilled Field, and this was shortly followed by The Lake in 1905.

He then returned to London and wrote further novels, including The Brook Kerith (1916) and Heloise and Abelard (1921), and a second collection of short stories, Celibate Lives (1927).

The Ebury edition of George Moore’s collected works ran to 20 volumes and was published shortly after his death.