SOURCE: "The Short Stories of George Moore," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. VI, No. 2, Winter, 1969, pp. 165-74.

Burkhart is an American critic and educator. In the following essay, he provides an overview of Moore's short fiction.

George Moore's short stories have been highly praised—by Frank O'Connor; by Osbert Burdett; by his biographer, Joseph Hone [in The Life of George Moore, 1936]; by various French critics; and, most enthusiastically of all, by George Moore himself. Of his story "So On He Fares" in The Untitled Field, Moore declared that it was "the best short story ever written." Till the end of his long life, Moore thought that his finest work was contained in The Untitled Field,—one of the three collections of his short stories, the other two being Celibate Lives and A Story-Teller's Holiday.

Moore's short stories, however, like most of his work, have been neglected since...