Catherine Gore

Catherine Grace Frances Gore

Catherine Grace Frances Gore (née Moody; 12 February 1798 – 29 January 1861)^[1] was a British novelist and dramatist, daughter of a wine merchant at Retford, where she was born. She is amongst the best known of silver fork writers – authors of the "long" Regency era depicting the gentility and etiquette of high society.^[2]

Biography

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 London physician Charles D. Nevinson. She is thus sometimes referred to as "Miss Nevinson" by contemporary reviewers and in scholarship. Catherine was interested in writing from an early age, gaining the nickname "the Poetess".^[1]

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 had ten children, eight of whom died at a young age. They had one surviving son, Captain Augustus Frederick Wentworth Gore, and one daughter, Cecilia Anne Mary, who married Lord Edward Thynne in 1853.^[1]

Literary career

Her 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 found success as a playwright, writing eleven plays that made their way to the London stage, though her plays never quite became as famous as her witty novels.

The Gores resided mainly on Continental Europe, with Catherine supporting 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. Among these may be mentioned Manners of the Day (1830), Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb (1841), and The Banker's Wife (1843). She also wrote for the stage, and composed music for songs.

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."

Novels by Catherine Gore

Compare

• Jane Austen
• Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

References

External links

• Works by Catherine Grace Frances Gore at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Catherine Gore at Internet Archive

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Wikisource