Some comparison to William McGonagall is worth making . Unlike McGonagall , Moore commanded a fairly wide variety of meters and forms , albeit like Emily Dickinson the majority of her verse is in the ballad meter . Like McGonagall , she held a maidenly bluestocking 's allegiance to the Temperance movement , and frequently indited odes to the joys of sobriety . Most importantly , like McGonagall , she was drawn to themes of accident , disaster , and sudden death ; as has been said of A. E. Housman 's '' A Shropshire Lad '' , in her pages you can count the dead and wounded . Edgar Wilson Nye called her " worse than a Gatling gun " . Here , she is inspired by the Great Chicago Fire : Her less morbid side is on display when she hymns '' Temperance Reform Clubs '' : Despite her acknowledgment that " Literary is a work very difficult to do , " she did not approve of the life of Byron : Mark Twain was a self-described fan of Moore ( though not for the reasons Moore would have liked ) . Twain alluded to her work in '' Following the Equator '' , and it is widely assumed that Moore served as a literary model for the character of Emmeline Grangerford in '' Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ''
Great Chicago Fire
Great Chicago Fire
Julia A. Moore