Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx. Friend of George Moore in 1885. He involved himself in her translation of Madame Bovary; she inspired character & plot in Moore's stab at an Ibsenite play, 'The Strike at Arlingford'; Moore had been present when she and Shaw acted 'A Doll's House.'
Lena Milman, close friend of GM in early 1890s; translator of Dostoevsky's Poor Folk. William Geary (also her close friend) thought GM considered marriage to Milman.
Olive Schreiner, novelist (The Story of an African Farm), path-breaking feminist. Her flirtation with George Moore in the mid 1880s annoyed her then-partner Havelock Ellis. She influenced Moore's thinking at the time of composition of A Drama in Muslin (1886)
Mary Robinson, poet, salonnière. Along with her sister Mabel, dear friends of George Moore's from the late 1870s, both in London & Paris. Introduced him to Walter Pater. Moore helped Mabel publish her first novel, A Plan of Campaign, with Vizetelly in 1888.
Julia Davis Frankau ("Frank Danby"), sister of James Davis (editor of The Bat, later playwright "Owen Hall') & writer Eliza Davis Aria. She wrote with wicked insight about her affair with George Moore in A Babe in Bohemia and elsewhere. Moore heavily hinted he was next thing to co-author of her first, best, and only realist novel Dr Phillips.
Clara Lanza, American novelist. George Moore's affair with Lanza at the end of the 1880s was entirely epistolary. The two never met. This was not unusual with Moore's happiest intimate relations with women. Hilda Hawthorne was another, though those two did meet, once, unhappily, in Paris. Moore wrote a comedy about another of these long-distance intimacies, 'The Coming of Gabrielle.'
Ada Leverson, British novelist and writer. Contributed to Punch, among others. She was named 'The Sphinx' by her friend Oscar Wilde. George Moore had a well-documented affair with her when he was writing Vain Fortune (1891) and she was writing her first stories.
Pearl Craigie, 'John Oliver Hobbes,' American by birth, a playwright & novelist. George Moore fell in love with her in 1894. Their 5-month romance included collaboration on a play. Just as the relationship approached intimacy, she jilted him. 'Mildred Lawson' springs from his bitterness & bewilderment.
Photograph is from about the time GM met her in early summer 1894, after his break-up with Pearl Craigie. Their affair began in London, continued to the Wagner Festival, and was evidently consummated in Aix-les-Bains. Lady Cunard resumed her affair with Moore after marrying Sir Bache Cunard. Her daughter Nancy believed GM to be her father. GM was terribly hurt when Lady Cunard diverted her affections to Sir Thomas Beecham in 1909, but the friendship survived with Nancy as a common bond.
Women in George Moore's Life
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