an early aptitude for poetry, publishing a volume of verse in 1872 which drew a letter of encouragement from the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1875, at the age of 20, he published two further poetry collections, Flying from a shadow and Dawn, and one prose volume, Sojourners together. The first of these is an imaginary travelogue whose scope is the span of the British empire, the globe "charted by a vision tragic and romantic, much in the style of Tennyson or Wordsworth but in the rhythm of the Victorian hymnal". Moore's 1893 novel, "I Forbid the Banns": the Story of a Comedy that was Played Seriously, was eventually to sell over half a million copies. The heroine, a young Australian women, scandalises society by operating on the principle that "if marriage is founded upon true affection, the tie will be regarded as sacred by the man and the woman without the necessity of any civil contract". Complications ensue and the experiment proves a failure. The success of the novel gave Moore gave the confidence to launch himself a literary career--in London. He celebrated his departure from Belfast by publishing a collection of anecdotal reminiscences, A Journalist's Notebook (1894) which gave widespread offence to his former colleagues. Moore was to publish over 80 novels. The Jessamy Bride (1897), a sentimental tale of romance between Mary Horneck and Oliver Goldsmith and involving, among other historical characters, Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, was a major success. He wrote several plays ranging from scenes of Goldsmith’s life to one on Nell Gwyn and including a four act verse play entitled The Mayflower (1892). Moore was a committed unionist. “It is better", he wrote, "to be separated from the rest of Ireland than from Great Britain”. Yet in The Truth about Ulster (1914) Moore allowed that the Protestants, in important respects, remained a planted "colony" and he expressed understanding but little sympathy for their sectarian passions. In his novel The Ulsterman (1914) he has the son of a bigoted mill-owner marrying a Catholic girl. In The Lady of the Reef (1915) an English artist living in Paris travels to County Down to claim an inheritance and is baffled by the strength of local anti-Catholic feeling. Moore also wrote novels with Irish historical themes that might have been thought more conducive to nationalist sympathies. Castle Omeragh (1903) is set in the west of Ireland