Review: George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, ed. by Matthew Creasy (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2025)

Abstract

The publication of this new edition of George Moore’s kunstlerroman Confessions of a Young Man (French edition first published in 1886 and English edition in 1888) is a welcome chance for readers to become acquainted with a largely forgotten text of one of Ireland’s most influential Irish revival and pre-revival writers. The book is a partly fictionalized account of Moore’s experience of fin de siècle Paris and London. It fascinatingly blends the genres of autobiography, memoir, and novel writing in a manner that makes it an archetypal example of decadent literature and also a proto-Modernist text. The similarities with James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) – which shall be examined shortly – extend far beyond the titles of both works.