SOURCE: St. Clair, William. “The Temptations of a Biographer: Thomas Moore and Byron.” The Byron Journal, 17 (1989): 50-56.

In the following essay, St. Clair alleges that Moore, while writing his massive two-volume biography of Lord Byron, purposefully altered some of Byron's private correspondence with him in order to enhance his own reputation as a member of Byron's respected circle of associates.

Thomas Moore's life of Byron is one of the great biographies of the nineteenth century. When news of the poet's death reached England in 1824, there was a flood of books. Publishers commissioned hacks to compile biographies with scissors and paste from old press cuttings. A dozen friends and acquaintances rushed out their reminiscences, some adulatory, others apologetic, a few spiteful. Moore's magisterial work, which appeared in two large volumes in 1830 and 1831, swept them all away. It was to remain the standard life until deep into the twentieth century...