Catherine Gore
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Catherine Grace Frances Gore (née Moody; 12 February 1798 – 29 January 1861),<ref name=dnb/> was a prolific English novelist and dramatist. The daughter of a wine merchant from Retford, Nottinghamshire, she became among the best known of the silver fork writers, who depicted gentility and etiquette in the high society of the Regency period.<ref>Catherine Gore 1799(?) – 1861 Template:Webarchive</ref>
Early life and marriage
Gore was born in 1798 in London, the youngest child of Mary (née Brinley) and Charles Moody, a wine merchant. Her father died soon afterwards, and her mother remarried in 1801, to the London physician Charles D. Nevinson. She is therefore referred to sometimes as "Miss Nevinson" by contemporary reviewers and in scholarly writings. Gore herself was interested in writing from an early age, gaining the nickname "the Poetess".<ref name=dnb/>
She married Lieutenant Charles Arthur Gore of the 1st Regiment of Life Guards on 15 February 1823 at St George's, Hanover Square; Gore retired later that year. They later moved to France. They had ten children, eight of whom died young. Their one surviving son, Captain Augustus Frederick Wentworth Gore, married Hon. Emily Anne Curzon, daughter of MP Robert Curzon and granddaughter of Viscount Curzon, in 1861,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and was the father of tennis champion Arthur Wentworth Gore.<ref name="obit">Template:Cite news</ref> Their eldest child and sole surviving daughter, Cecilia Anne Mary, married Lord Edward Thynne in 1853.<ref name=dnb/>
Literary career
Gore's first novel, Theresa Marchmont, or The Maid of Honour, was published in 1824. Her first major success was Pin Money, published in 1831, but her most popular and well-known novel was to be Cecil, or Adventures of a Coxcomb, published in 1841. Gore also met with success as a playwright, writing eleven plays that made their way onto the London stage, although her plays never quite matched the fame of her witty novels. Amongst her plays are The School for Coquettes (1831) and Quid Pro Quo (1844).
The Gores resided mainly in Continental Europe, where Catherine supported her family by her voluminous writings. Between 1824 and 1862 she produced about 70 works, the most successful of which were novels of fashionable English life, such as Manners of the Day (1830), Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb and The Banker's Wife (1843). She wrote articles in Bentley's Miscellany under the pseudonym "Albany Poyntz".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She also wrote for the stage, composed music, and published The Book of Roses, or The Rose Fancier's Manual (1838), a guide to the cultivation of roses.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Gore's 1861 obituary in The Times concluded that Gore was "the best novel writer of her class and the wittiest woman of her age."
Works
See also
References
Template:Reflist Template:A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature
External links
- Pages with broken file links
- 1798 births
- 1861 deaths
- 19th-century English women writers
- 19th-century English dramatists and playwrights
- 19th-century English novelists
- Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery
- English women dramatists and playwrights
- English women novelists
- People from Retford
- Pseudonymous women writers
- Victorian novelists
- Victorian women writers
- Women of the Regency era
- 19th-century pseudonymous writers
- Gore family (Anglo-Irish aristocracy)
- English historical novelists
- Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period
- Writers of historical fiction set in antiquity
- Victorian short story writers
- 19th-century English short story writers
- English women short story writers
- English rose horticulturists
- 19th-century English non-fiction writers
- English women non-fiction writers
- 19th-century English poets
- English women poets
- Victorian poets
- 19th-century English translators
- French–English translators