Edward Moore

Artist Info

Edward MooreCardiff, 1835 - 1916, Devon

LC name authority rec.n50004320

LC Heading: Moore, Edward, 1835-1916

Biography:

Moore, Edward (1835–1916), college head and literary scholar, was born at Cardiff, where his father practised as a physician, on 28 February 1835. He was the elder son of Dr John Moore and his second wife, Charlotte Puckle. He was educated at Bromsgrove School, and at Pembroke College, Oxford (1853–7). In 1858, after obtaining four first classes (classics and mathematics) in moderations and the final schools, he was elected to an open fellowship at Queen's College. He was president of the Oxford Union Society in 1860.

Moore was ordained in 1861, and three years later was appointed by Queen's College to the principalship of St Edmund Hall, which he held for nearly fifty years. Brought up in an evangelical home, he remained a low-churchman and maintained this aspect of the hall's tradition. Under his headship the reputation of the hall as a home of ‘true religion and sound learning’ was greatly increased, the numbers were more than doubled, and it was represented in almost every honours list. He lectured on Aristotle's Ethics and Poetics, producing student handbooks on both, although his early scholarly interest was more towards mathematics.

The university commission of 1877 prepared a new scheme for St Edmund Hall, to take effect on the retirement or death of the existing head. Moore made it his object to defeat this scheme, which would have brought the hall under the control of Queen's College and ended its separate existence. In 1903, on Moore being nominated to a canonry at Canterbury, J. R. Magrath, the provost of Queen's, carried through the university's hebdomadal council a statute which would have resulted in the absorption of the hall by the college. Moore successfully opposed the statute in congregation, and, retaining the headship with the sanction of the prime minister, A. J. Balfour, set himself to preserve the independence of the hall. After a prolonged struggle, and with the decisive assistance of Lord Curzon, the university chancellor, a statute was passed in 1913 preserving St Edmund Hall as an independent institution. He at last felt free to resign, and settled permanently at Canterbury, where he was an active member of the chapter, taking a special interest in the library.

To the world at large Moore was best known as a Dante scholar. His interest was awakened by a visit to Italy in 1863 and developed by his friendship with H. F. Tozer. In 1876 he founded the Oxford Dante Society, thereby giving a powerful impulse to the study of Dante in Oxford and beyond. In 1886 he was appointed Barlow lecturer on Dante at University College, London, an appointment which he held in all for seventeen years; in 1895 a Dante lectureship was specially created for him at the Taylor Institution at Oxford. Two of his earliest works on Dante, The Time References in the ‘Divina Commedia’ (1887) and Dante and his Early Biographers (1890), were the outcome of the Barlow lectureship. In 1889 appeared his monumental Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the ‘Divina Commedia’. This work, which at once placed Moore among the leading Dante scholars of his time, was the first serious attempt to deal scientifically and methodically with the complicated problems presented by the text of the Commedia. In response to a proposal from the Clarendon Press for a single-volume edition of the works of Dante, Moore, in collaboration with Paget Toynbee, brought out in 1894 the Oxford Dante, of which a fourth edition, revised by Toynbee, appeared in 1924. It was accepted as the standard of reference throughout the world until the publication in 1921 of the critical edition sponsored by the Società Dantesca Italiana of Florence. The Oxford Dante was followed in 1896–1903 by three series of Studies in Dante. A fourth series was on the eve of publication at the time of Moore's death, and carried through the press by Toynbee. A new impression of the four volumes was published in 1968–9. Especially noteworthy among the essays contained in these four volumes were: ‘Scripture and classical authors in Dante’, accompanied by elaborate tables, in the first volume; the closely reasoned article on the Quaestio de aqua et terra, which finally established the authenticity of the treatise, and the masterly vindication of the letter to Can Grande, in the second and third; and the lengthy series of studies on the textual criticism of the Convivio, which constitute the pièces justificatives of the emended text as printed in the Oxford Dante, in the posthumously published fourth volume.

Moore's close acquaintance with the whole range of Dante's writings, his attainments in the many fields covered by his subject, his acute yet cautious critical judgement, his sound scholarship, and indefatigable industry gained him a European reputation, which was recognized by his election, among other distinctions, as a corresponding member of the Accademia della Crusca in 1906 and as a fellow of the British Academy in the same year.

Moore was twice married: first, in 1868, to Katharine Edith (d. 1873), daughter of John Stogdon, solicitor, of Exeter; second, in 1878, to Annie (d. 1906), daughter of Admiral John Francis Campbell Mackenzie. He had one son and two daughters from each marriage. Moore died of a stroke at Chagford, Devon, on 2 September 1916, and was buried at Canterbury Cathedral.

P. J. Toynbee, rev. M. C. Curthoys

Sources E. Armstrong, ‘Edward Moore, 1835–1916’, PBA, [7] (1915–16), 575–84 · P. Toynbee, ‘Preface’, in E. Moore, Studies in Dante, fourth series (1917), v–vi · C. Hardie, ‘Preface’, in E. Moore, Studies in Dante, first series, new impression (1969), v–vii · The Times (5 Sept 1916) · personal knowledge (1927) · J. N. D. Kelly, St Edmund Hall: almost seven hundred years (1989) · C. Firth, Modern languages at Oxford, 1724–1929 (1929) · J. Foster, Oxford men and their colleges (1893) · C. S. Singleton, ‘Preface’, in P. Toynbee, A dictionary of proper names and notable matters in the works of Dante, rev. edn (1968)

Archives Bodl. Oxf., letters relating to Dante · Bodl. Oxf., papers · U. Oxf., Taylor Institution :: BL, letters to W. E. Gladstone, Add. MSS 44499–44526

Likenesses oils, St Edmund Hall, Oxford · photograph, repro. in E. Moore, Studies in Dante, first series, new impression (1969), frontispiece

Wealth at death £17,938 8s. 2d.: resworn probate, 30 Sept 1916, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

P. J. Toynbee, ‘Moore, Edward (1835–1916)’, rev. M. C. Curthoys, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/35088, accessed 2 Oct 2015].