Esther Waters
Written by George Moore
Narrated by Deaver Brown
4/5
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About this audiobook
The great 19th century novel by the first important Irish novelist. The story of a girl whose father died young so the family was impoverished, she never learned to read, and was thrust into the servant class and occasionally into the workhouse. Becoming pregnant she lost her position and struggled to bring up her son. A must listen.
George Moore
George Moore (1852-1933) was an Irish poet, novelist, memoirist, and critic. Born into a prominent Roman Catholic family near Lough Carra, County Mayo, he was raised at his ancestral home of Moore Hall. His father was an Independent MP for Mayo, a founder of the Catholic Defence Association, and a landlord with an estate surpassing fifty square kilometers. As a young man, Moore spent much of his time reading and exploring the outdoors with his brother and friends, including the young Oscar Wilde. In 1867, after several years of poor performance at St. Mary’s College, a boarding school near Birmingham, Moore was expelled and sent home. Following his father’s death in 1870, Moore moved to Paris to study painting but struggled to find a teacher who would accept him. He met such artists as Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Mallarmé, and Zola, the latter of whom would form an indelible influence on Moore’s adoption of literary naturalism. After publishing The Flowers of Passion (1877) and Pagan Poems (1881), poetry collections influenced by French symbolism, Moore turned to realism with his debut novel A Modern Lover (1883). As one of the first English language authors to write in the new French style, which openly embraced such subjects as prostitution, lesbianism, and infidelity, Moore attracted controversy from librarians, publishers, and politicians alike. As realism became mainstream, Moore was recognized as a pioneering modernist in England and Ireland, where he returned in 1901. Thereafter, he became an important figure in the Irish Literary Revival alongside such colleagues and collaborators as Edward Martyn, Lady Gregory, and W. B. Yeats.
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Reviews for Esther Waters
36 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book really bowled me over. It deserves a place as one of the greatest works of Victorian fiction. I loved the way Moore was able to realistically portray not only a woman but a working-class woman. I wept at her struggle to keep her illegitimate child, shared her determination and felt the difficulty of her choices. Yet it is neither downbeat nor sentimental. A much more true to life portrait of a Victorian girl who bears an illegitimate child than Mrs Gaskell's Ruth (much as I admire and enjoy Mrs G's works). And certainly better than Tess of the D'Urbervilles (but I have never been a big Hardy fan: Thomas or Oliver...)
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was immersed in 19th century English literature and asked a friend for suggestions and he named this book as the book to read by George Moore. I did and think I felt it was well worth reading.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fascinating and disturbing picture of life for poor women in late 19th-century England. Baby-farming and other horrors are vividly portrayed. Were women back then really all that self-sacrificing or is this Victorian stereotyping? Still, heroine is enduring and book is worth reading.