Thomas Sturge Moore, portrait by Charles Shannon, c. 1897, a.k.a. The Man with a Yellow Glove
Thomas Sturge Moore (4 March 1870 – 18 July 1944) was a British poet, author and artist.
Biography
Sturge Moore was born at 3 Wellington Square, Hastings, East Sussex, on 4 March 1870 and educated at Dulwich College, the Croydon School of Art and Lambeth School of Art.[1][2] In Lambeth he studied under the wood-engraver Charles Roberts. He was a long-term friend and correspondent of W. B. Yeats, who was to describe him as "one of the most exquisite poets writing in England". He was also a playwright, writing a Medea influenced by Yeats' drama and the Japanese Noh style. As a wood-engraver and artist he designed the covers for poetry editions of Yeats and others, as well as illustrating books for the Vale Press of Charles Ricketts.[3][4][5]
He was a prolific poet and his subjects included morality, art and the spirit writing in a 'severely classical tone', according to poet/critic Yvor Winters.[3] His first pamphlet, Two Poems, was printed privately in 1893 and his first book of verse, The Vinedresser, was published in 1899. His love for poetry led him to become an active member of the Poetry Recital Society.
In 1901, Moore, with Yeats, Laurence Binyon, Charles Ricketts, and Ethel and Sybil Pye, formed the Literary Theatre Club. Moore's first (of 31) play to be produced, a copyright reading of Aphrodite against Artemis, was the first production staged by the club, at the Dalston Theatre on 30 July 1901. Yeats described the play as "powerful with a beautiful constrained passion."[6]
In 1913 Moore nominated Rabindranath Tagore the Indian poet for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Moore received a civil list pension of £75 per annum in 1920 in recognition of his contribution to literature. In 1930 he was nominated as one of seven candidates for the position of Poet Laureate. He suffered from chronic ill health, suffering a series of heart attacks in 1942 and 1943, and died on 18 July 1944 at a convalescent home, St Andrews Cottage in Clewer, Windsor, Berkshire, from a kidney infection following a prostate operation.[4][7][8][9]
Sturge Moore adopted the use of his middle name 'Sturge' (his mother's family name) as a way of avoiding confusion with the poet Thomas Moore.[4]
On 26 November 1903 Moore married Marie Appia, niece of Louis Appia, a founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and cousin of the Swiss stage designer Adolphe Appia.[11] They had two children: Daniel Sturge-Moore, journalist and broadcaster; and Henriette Sturge-Moore, prominent theatre designer, teacher and interior decorator.[12][13][14]
^Piggott, Jan. “The Book-Covers of Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944) for William Butler Yeats (1865–1939).” The British Art Journal 20, no. 2 (2019): 12–21.
^Public Records Office. "1944". England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966. Kew, Surrey: The National Archives. p. 756.
^Kelly, John. "Moore, Thomas Sturge". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
^Bowers, Jr., William Edgar (1953). The Poetry of Sturge Moore. Stanford, CA: Dept. of English, Stanford University. p. iv.
"Sturge Moore and the Life of Art" by Frederick L. Gwynn (University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, 1951). 159 pages, includes "A Bibliography of Sturge Moore." Open access full-text PDF file available from the University of Kansas.
