← Menu of Letters 1891

Aet. 39, to his mother. “March 1890” is inscribed by an unknown hand on the manuscript, which is missing its first page(s). Joseph Blake of Ballinafad was Mary Blake Moore’s brother. George Moore set aside his work on the novel Esther Waters (1894) in order to writeVain Fortune, a novel that was serialized in the Lady’s Pictorial (July-November 1891) before publication as a book. Vain Fortune began as a collaboration with Ella Hepworth Dixon, who dropped out because of illness. Augustus Moore’s second wife was Justina Maria Monckton (1859-1909), daughter of John Braddick Monckton and sister of Lionel Monckton; she wrote the “Letter from L—” column in the Hawk and later wrote novels under the pseudonym Martin J. Pritchard. George and Augustus were quarreling at this time about the latter’s management of the Hawk, to which George was a regular contributor.