Editing Thomas Moore (section)

==Byron's Memoirs==
[[File:Lord Byron by Henry Pierce Bone.jpg|150px|thumb|left|[[Lord Byron|Byron]]: "When you read my Memoirs you will learn the evils of true dissipation."<ref name="Knight" />]]Moore was much criticised by contemporaries for allowing himself to be persuaded, on the grounds of their indelicacy, to destroy [[Byron's Memoirs]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mayne |first1=Ethel Colburn |author-link1=Ethel Colburn Mayne |year=1969 |orig-year=1924 |title=Byron |url=https://archive.org/details/byron0000mayn |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Barnes & Noble |isbn=0-389-01071-5|pages=452 }}</ref> Modern scholarship assigns the blame elsewhere.

In 1821, with Byron's blessing, Moore sold the manuscript, with which Byron had entrusted him three years before, to the publisher [[John Murray (1778–1843)|John Murray]]. Although he himself allowed that it contained some "very coarse things",<ref name="Knight">{{cite book |last1=Knight |first1=G Wilson |title=Lord Byron's Marriage: The Evidence of Asterisks |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=978-1-138-67557-5 |page=214 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YiYFDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA214 |access-date=20 August 2020}}</ref> when, following Bryon's death in 1824, Moore learned that Murray had deemed the material unfit for publication he spoke of settling the matter with a duel.<ref>Cochran, Peter (2014). ''The Burning of Byron's Memoirs: New and Unpublished Essays and Papers''. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. {{ISBN|978-1-4438-6815-0}}. pp. 6–7</ref> But the combination of Byron's wife [[Lady Byron]], half-sister and executor [[Augusta Leigh]] and Moore's rival in Byron's friendship [[John Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton|John Cam Hobhouse]] prevailed. In what some were to call the greatest literary crime in history, in Moore's presence the family solicitors tore up all extant copies of the manuscript and burned them in Murray's fireplace.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Marchand |first1=Leslie |title=Byron: a Portrait |date=1970 |publisher=Knopf |location=New York |isbn=978-0-394-41820-9 |pages=466–467}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kells |first1=Stuart |year=2017 |title=The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3kHcDgAAQBAJ&q=%22burning+of+the+personal+memoirs%22&pg=PA158 |location=Melbourne |publisher=Text Publishing |page=158 |isbn=978-1-925355-99-4 |access-date=12 July 2018 }}</ref>

With the assistance of papers provided by [[Mary Shelley]], Moore retrieved what he could. His ''[[iarchive:lettersjournalso01byro|Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of His Life]]'' (1830) "contrived", in the view of [[Thomas Babington Macaulay|Macaulay]], "to exhibit so much of the character and opinions of his friend, with so little pain to the feelings of the living".<ref name="Harry White" /> Lady Byron still professed herself scandalised<ref name="Poetry Foundation" />—as did ''[[The Times]]''.<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|232}}

With Byron an inspiration, Moore previously published a collection of songs, ''[https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/thomas-moore/evenings-in-greece-27139 Evenings in Greece]'' (1826), and, set in 3rd-century Egypt, his only prose novel ''[[The Epicurean]]'' (1827). Supplying a demand for "semi-erotic romance tinged with religiosity" it was a popular success.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hawthorne |first1=Mark |title=Thomas Moore's "The Epicurean": The Anacreontic Poet in Search of Eternity |journal=Studies in Romanticism |date=1975 |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=249–272 |doi=10.2307/25599975 |jstor=25599975 }}</ref>