T. Sturge Moore

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. 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.

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. 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."

In 1913 Moore nominated Rabindranath Tagore the Indian poet for the Nobel Prize in literature.