Thomas Sturge Moore Papers

Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944), writer and artist, was born in Hastings on 4 March 1870, the eldest of four sons (one of whom was the philosopher G. E. Moore) and four daughters. The family moved to Norwood in 1871 and he attended Dulwich College from 1879 to 1884. In 1885 he enrolled in Croydon Art School where he met Charles Shannon and two years later transferred to Lambeth Art School where he met Charles Ricketts, both of whom became lifelong friends. In 1895 Moore's parents moved to Torquay, but he remained in London, living mainly off an annuity from an uncle. In 1893 he had privately published "Two Poems", and in 1899 issued "The Vinedresser and Other Poems", which impressed Laurence Binyon. Binyon introduced him to W. B. Yeats in 1899 and another lifelong friendship was established. In 1885 Moore began regular visits to his French relatives and fell in love with his cousin Marie Appia, daughter of George Appia, a Lutheran minister. Moore declared his feelings in June 1897, but was rejected; he persisted and the two finally married in 1903. Their son Daniel was born in 1905, and their daughter Henriette (Riette) in 1907. Moore's developing interest in drama led to his association with a number of societies, notably the Literary Theatre Club, which he helped found in 1901 with Florence Farr and Charles Ricketts. He joined the Stage Society in 1908, shortly after appearing in its production of The Persians, and in 1912 was appointed to its council. Moore designed and illustrated books throughout his life (notably his own works and those of Yeats), and in May 1904 he was elected a member of the Society of Twelve, a group of wood-engravers and lithographers. He published books on Altdorfer (1900), Dürer (1905), and Correggio (1906), and in 1910 formulated his aesthetic ideas in "Art and Life". His story "A Platonic Marriage" was attacked by the Vigilance Society upon its publication in the English Review in January 1911, but later that year he was elected to the Royal Society of Literature. In the following year he joined Harold Monro's Poetry Bookshop. At this time he also helped translate works by Rabindranath Tagore, then becoming popular in England. In 1919 Moore moved his family from Hampstead, London, where they had lived since 1912, to Steep in Hampshire, where his children attended the progressive Bedales School and where he gave classes in aesthetics. The family returned to Hampstead in 1927, where he began to keep open house on Friday evenings. His poems were gathered into "The Collected Poems of T. Sturge Moore", issued in four volumes from 1931 to 1933, and his "Selected Poems" appeared in 1934. He underwent a Steinach rejuvenating operation in 1936, and at the outbreak of the Second World War moved to Dorking. He suffered from chronic ill health from 1942 and died in Windsor 18 July 1944 following an operation.

Riette Sturge Moore was the daughter of Thomas Sturge Moore and his wife, Marie Appia. She trained as an interior decorator but, by the 1930s, had begun to work as a theatre designer. She designed sets for productions at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon such as Marlowe's Dr Faustus in 1946 and Twelth Night in 1947. She taught design at Dartington, Corsham and the Old Viv and combined this with continued work as a theatre designer. She was responsible, for instance, for the costumes in the celebrated production of Corialanus in 1959.