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Who is Frances Mabel Robinson?

According to Joseph Hone in The Life of George Moore (1936, page 67), Mabel Robinson (1858–1954) met George Moore when he was introduced to her father S.T. Robinson in their London home circa 1877. Her father was an architect and the editor of the Art Monthly Review (which did not publish George’s criticism).

Like George, Mabel studied to become a painter but switched to writing fiction and nonfiction, sometimes under the pseudonym W. S. Gregg. She and George remained lifelong friends.

According to Professor Kathryn Laing, “Moore’s indebtedness to Mabel Robinson’s experimental ‘ethical aesthetics’ in her fiction that she, with her sister and [Vernon] Lee had tried to formulate, is evident in the transitional nature of his 1890s fiction, specifically Esther Waters.” See “F. Mabel Robinson, Vernon Lee, and George Moore: The Aesthetics of Sympathy and Texts of Transition.”

Like her older sister Mary, Mabel lived for many years in France.