SOURCE: "George Moore's Lonely Voices: A Study of His Short Stories," in George Moore's Mind and Art by A. Norman Jeffares and others, edited by Graham Owens, Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1970, pp. 144-65.

Kennelly is an Irish poet, critic, novelist, and educator. In the following essay, which was first published in England in 1968, he perceives the theme of loneliness as integral to Moore's short fiction.

In his introduction to Celibate Lives, George Moore has an imaginary conversation in which, with a characteristically light touch, he reveals something of his attitude to the short story. When his imaginary protagonist asks Moore if he is for or against adventures, he replies that he does not deal in adventures "but in soul cries". Here, Moore gets to the very core of what has preoccupied Irish short story writers ever since his time—the problem of man's loneliness. Frank O'Connor, in his extremely...