SOURCE: "Moore's Way Back: The Untilled Field and The Lake" in The Way Back: George Moore's "The Untilled Field" & "The Lake", edited by Robert Welch, Barnes & Noble Books, 1982, pp. 29-44.

In the following essay, Welch examines the autobiographical aspects of Moore's The Untilled Field and The Lake.

Those who have written of George Moore's part in the Irish literary revival have recognised the significance, for the man and for his art, of his return to Ireland in 1901. He was tired of England, and wanted to play a part in the rejuvenation of life he felt was starting to take place in Ireland.

Moore had been living and working as a man of letters in London since his father's death in 1880, and had made a name for himself as the English exponent of the naturalism of Zola and the impassioned realism of Balzac. By the time he left England...