Up for auction is an unstated first American edition of Sister Teresa, a 1901 novel by the Irish writer George Moore published by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, whose longtime “art adviser” George Stratton Holloway (1859-1939) designed the elaborate gilt decoration on the title’s front board (you can see his initial “H” at the bottom left).  

The navy blue cloth-bound book, which does not come with a dust jacket / wrapper, measures 5 inches wide by 7-3/’4 inches high and comprises 378 pages. But for an unsigned / uncredited portrait of the author that acts as the book’s frontispiece – it contains the words “Always yours / George Moore,” presumably in the author’s handwriting – the title is not illustrated.

The book’s title page reads:

Sister Teresa

By

George Moore

Philadelphia

J. B. Lippincott Company

Mdxxxxi

On the next page are these four lines:

Copyright, 1901

By J. B. Lippincott Company

Electrotyped and Printed by

J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

I found a brief description of Sister Teresa online, and it reads:

The story revolves around Evelyn Innes, an opera singer who makes a life-altering decision. She chooses to leave behind her fame, her father, her friends, and even her two lovers to become a nun. This drastic transformation leads her on a path of spiritual exploration and self-discovery.

Moore’s portrayal of Evelyn’s psychological complexity sets him apart from many of his Victorian contemporaries. The novel delves into themes of sacrifice, identity, and the clash between worldly desires and spiritual yearnings.

And this was quite a thoughtful, and lengthy, commentary on the book from a 2016 posting on Goodreads:

Yet more evidence that George Moore was streets ahead of the majority of his Victorian contemporaries when it came to psychological complexity.

An opera singer, Evelyn Innes, decides to abandon her life to become a nun, leaving behind her fame, her father, her friends, and her two lovers.

She realizes that she does not have a vocation, that most of the nuns only seem to have entered the convent for the discipline or due to a disappointment, yet she still aims to become a postulant.

Evelyn joins a contemplative rather than an active order, serving the community merely through prayer rather than through actions. However, her singing at the local chapel will help to raise the money to pay off the convent's debts.

Her friends and lovers are variously disappointed or baffled by her decision. So why does she do it?

Certainly she has a desire to renounce the material world, to replace it with the simplicity of obedience and prayer found only in the convent. As she tells her old friend Louise, "I came here in quest of happiness."

But it's not that simple. The other Sisters are childish and not all supportive of her. She still feels torn between the sensuality of Wagner and the spirituality of the hymns she sings, between sex and the sacrament.

It's a credit to how gently engrossing her spiritual questing was portrayed by Moore that I didn't know that Sister Teresa was a sequel until I had finished. It also explained why there was no preamble to Evelyn's decision -- the entire first book must have been a preamble!

I don't know how Moore did his research for this story, but the second half of the novel takes you deep inside the life of the convent in all its obedience and simplicity to convincing and enlightening effect.

Moore was apparently something of a prickly chap, which makes his choice of theme, a successful young woman's search for God and solitude, all the more surprising.

As with everything I have read by him to date, he pulled it off with aplomb.

Here’s most of George Moore’s Wikipedia entry:

George Augustus Moore (24 February 1852 – 21 January 1933) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day.

As a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola. His writings influenced James Joyce, according to the literary critic and biographer Richard Ellmann, and, although Moore's work is sometimes seen as outside the mainstream of both Irish and British literature, he is as often regarded as the first great modern Irish novelist.

LIFE.

FAMILY ORIGINS. George Moore's family had lived in Moore Hall, near Lough Carra, County Mayo, for almost a century. The house was built by his paternal great-grandfather—also called George Moore—who had made his fortune as a wine merchant in Alicante. The novelist's grandfather—another George—was a friend of Maria Edgeworth, and author of An Historical Memoir of the French Revolution. His great-uncle, John Moore, was president of the Province of Connacht in the short-lived Irish Republic of 1798 during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

George Moore's father, George Henry Moore, sold his stable and hunting interests during the Great Irish Famine, and from 1847 to 1857 served as an Independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Mayo in the British House of Commons. George Henry was renowned as a fair landlord, fought to uphold the rights of tenants, and was a founder of the Catholic Defence Association. His estate consisted of 5,000 hectares (50 square miles) in Mayo, with a further 40 hectares in County Roscommon.

EARLY LIFE. Moore was born in Moore Hall in 1852. As a child, he enjoyed the novels of Walter Scott, which his father read to him. He spent a good deal of time outdoors with his brother, Maurice George Moore, and also became friendly with the young Willie and Oscar Wilde, who spent their summer holidays at nearby Moytura. Oscar was to later quip of Moore: "He conducts his education in public."

His father had again turned his attention to horse breeding and in 1861 brought his champion horse, Croagh Patrick, to England for a successful racing season, together with his wife and nine-year-old son. For a while, George was left at Cliff's stables until his father decided to send him to his alma mater facilitated by his winnings. Moore's formal education started at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, a Catholic boarding school near Birmingham, where he was the youngest of 150 boys. He spent all of 1864 at home, having contracted a lung infection brought about by a breakdown in his health. His academic performance was poor while he was hungry and unhappy. In January 1865, he returned to St. Mary's College with his brother Maurice, where he refused to study as instructed and spent time reading novels and poems. That December the principal, Spencer Northcote, wrote a report that "he hardly knew what to say about George." By the summer of 1867, he was expelled for, as he wrote in 1903's The Untilled Field, "idleness and general worthlessness," and returned to Mayo. His father said that he feared about George and his brother Maurice, "[that] those two redheaded boys are stupid," an observation which proved untrue for all four sons.

LONDON AND PARIS. In 1868, Moore's father was again elected MP for Mayo, and the family moved to London the following year. Here, Moore senior tried, unsuccessfully, to have his son follow a career in the military, though, prior to this, he attended the School of Art in the South Kensington Museum, where his achievements were no better. He was freed from any burden of education when his father died in 1870. Moore, though still a minor, inherited the family estate that generated a yearly income of £3,596. He handed the estate over to his brother Maurice to manage and in 1873, on attaining his majority, moved to Paris to study art. It took him several attempts to find an artist who would accept him as a pupil. Rodolphe Julian, who had previously been a shepherd and circus masked man, took him on for 40 francs a month. At Académie Julian, he met Louis Welden Hawkins, who became Moore's flatmate and whose trait, as a failed artist, shows up in Moore's own characters. He met many of the key artists and writers of the time, including Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Daudet, Mallarmé, Turgenev, and, above all, Zola, who was to prove an influential figure in Moore's subsequent development as a writer.

While still in Paris his first book, a collection of lyric poems called The Flowers of Passion was self-published in 1877. The poems were derivative, and they were maliciously reviewed by the critics who were offended by some of the depravities in store for moralistic readers. The book was withdrawn by Moore. He was forced to return to Ireland in 1880 to raise £3,000 to pay debts incurred on the family estate, owing to his tenants refusing to pay their rent and the drop in agricultural prices. During his time back in Mayo, he gained a reputation as a fair landlord, continuing the family tradition of not evicting tenants and refusing to carry firearms when travelling round the estate.

While in Ireland, he decided to abandon art and move to London to become a professional writer. There he published his second poetry collection, Pagan Poems, in 1881. These early poems reflect his interest in French symbolism and are now almost entirely neglected. In 1886, Moore published Confessions of a Young Man, a lively memoir about his 20s spent in Paris and London among bohemian artists. It contains a substantial amount of literary criticism for which it has received a fair amount of praise, for instance The Modern Library chose it in 1917 to be included in the series as "one of the most significant documents of the passionate revolt of English literature against the Victorian tradition."

CONTROVERSY IN ENGLAND. During the 1880s, Moore began work on a series of novels in a realist style. His first novel, A Modern Lover (1883), was a three-volume work, as preferred by the circulating libraries, and deals with the art scene of the 1870s and 1880s in which many characters are identifiably real. The circulating libraries in England banned the book because of its explicit portrayal of the amorous pursuits of its hero. At this time the British circulating libraries, such as Mudie’s Select Library, controlled the market for fiction, and the fee-paying public expected them to guarantee the morality of the novels provided. His next realist novel, A Mummer’s Wife (1885) was also regarded as unsuitable by Mudie's, and W. H. Smith refused to stock it on their news-stalls. Despite this, during its first year of publication the book went through fourteen editions, mainly because of the publicity stirred up by its opponents. The French newspaper Le Voltaire published it in serial form as La Femme du Cabotin in July–October 1886. His next novel, A Drama in Muslin, was again banned by Mudie's and Smith's. In response, Moore declared war on the circulating libraries by publishing two provocative pamphlets: Literature at Nurse and Circulating Morals. In these, he complained that the libraries profit from salacious popular fiction while refusing to stock serious literary fiction.

Moore's publisher Henry Vizetelly began to issue unabridged mass-market translations of French realist novels that endangered the moral and commercial influence of the circulating libraries around this time. In 1888, the circulating libraries fought back by encouraging the House of Commons to implement laws to stop "the rapid spread of demoralising literature in this country." Vizetelly was brought to court by the National Vigilance Association (NVA) for "obscene libel." The charge arose from the publication of the English translation of Zola’s La Terre. A second case was brought the following year to force implementation of the original judgement and to remove all of Zola's works. This led to the 70-year-old publisher becoming involved in the literary cause. Throughout Moore supported the avant garde publisher, and on 22 September 1888, about a month before the trial, wrote a letter that appeared in the St. James Gazette. In it, Moore suggested that, rather than a jury of twelve tradesmen, Vizatelly should be judged by three novelists. Moore pointed out that such celebrated books as Madame Bovary and Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin had morals equivalent to Zola's, though their literary merits might differ.

Because of his willingness to tackle such issues as prostitution, extramarital sex, and lesbianism, Moore's novels were initially met with scandal, but this subsided as the public's taste for realist fiction grew. Moore began to find success as an art critic with the publication of books such as Impressions and Opinions (1891) and Modern Painting (1893), the first significant attempt to introduce the Impressionists to an English audience. By this time, Moore was first able to live from the proceeds of his literary work.

Other realist novels by Moore from this period include A Drama in Muslin (1886), a satiric story of the marriage trade in Anglo-Irish society that hints at same-sex relationships among the unmarried daughters of the gentry, and Esther Waters (1894), the story of an unmarried housemaid who becomes pregnant and is abandoned by her footman lover. Both of these books have remained almost constantly in print since their first publication. His 1887 novel A Mere Accident is an attempt to merge his symbolist and realist influences. He also published a collection of short stories: Celibates (1895).

DUBLIN AND THE CELTIC REVIVAL. In 1901, Moore returned to Dublin at the suggestion of his cousin and friend, Edward Martyn. Martyn had been involved in Ireland's cultural and dramatic movements for some years and was working with Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats to establish the Irish Literary Theatre. Moore soon became deeply involved in this project and in the broader Irish Literary Revival. He had already written a play, The Strike at Arlingford (1893), which was produced by the Independent Theatre. The play was the result of a challenge between Moore and George Robert Sims over Moore's criticism of all contemporary playwrights in Impressions and Opinions. Moore won the £100 bet made by Sims for a stall to witness an "unconventional" play by Moore, though Moore insisted the word "unconventional" be excised.

The Irish Literary Theatre staged his satirical comedy The Bending of the Bough (1900), adapted from Martyn's The Tale of a Town, originally rejected by the theatre but unselfishly given to Moore for revision, and Martyn's Maeve. Staged by the company which would later become the Abbey Theatre, The Bending of the Bough was a historically important play and introduced realism into Irish literature. Lady Gregory wrote that it: "hits impartially all round." The play was a satire on Irish political life, and as it was unexpectedly nationalist, was considered the first to deal with a vital question that had appeared in Irish life. Diarmuid and Grania, a poetic play in prose co-written with Yeats in 1901, was also staged by the theatre, with incidental music by Edward Elgar. After this production Moore took up pamphleteering on behalf of the Abbey, and parted company with the dramatic movement.

Moore published two books of prose fiction set in Ireland around this time; a second book of short stories, The Untilled Field (1903), and a novel, The Lake (1905). The Untilled Field deals with clerical interference in the daily lives of the Irish peasantry, and of the issue of emigration. The stories were originally written for translation into Irish, to serve as models for other writers working in the language. Three of the translations were published in the New Ireland Review, but publication was then paused because of their perceived anti-clerical sentiment. In 1902, the entire collection was translated by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha and Pádraig Ó Súillebháinn, and published in a parallel-text edition by the Gaelic League as An-tÚr-Ghort. Moore later revised the texts for the English edition. These stories were influenced by Turgenev’s A Sportsman's Sketches, a book recommended to Moore by W. K. Magee, a sub-librarian of the National Library of Ireland, who had earlier suggested that Moore "was best suited to become Ireland's Turgenev." The tales are recognized by some as representing the birth of the Irish short story as a literary genre.

In 1903, following a disagreement with his brother Maurice over the religious upbringing of his nephews, Moore declared himself to be Protestant. His conversion was announced in a letter to the Irish Times newspaper. Moore remained in Dublin until 1911. In 1914, he published Hail and Farewell, a gossipy three-volume memoir of his time there, which entertained readers but infuriated former friends. Moore quipped, "Dublin is now divided into two sets; one half is afraid it will be in the book, and the other is afraid that it won't."

In his later years, he was increasingly friendless, having quarreled bitterly with Yeats and Osborn Bergin, among others: Oliver St. John Gogarty said: "It was impossible to be a friend of his, because he was incapable of gratitude."

LATER LIFE. Moore returned to London in 1911, where, with the exception of frequent trips to France, he was to spend much of the rest of his life. In 1913, he travelled to Jerusalem to research his next novel, The Brook Kerith (1916). Moore once again courted controversy, as the story was based on the supposition that a non-divine Christ did not die on the cross but instead was nursed back to health and repented of his pride in declaring himself Son of God. Other books from this period include a further collection of short-stories called A Storyteller's Holiday (1918), a collection of essays called Conversations in Ebury Street (1924), and a play, The Making of an Immortal (1927). Moore also spent considerable time revising and preparing his earlier writings for new editions.

Partly because of his brother Maurice's pro-treaty activity, Moore Hall was burnt by anti-treaty partisans in 1923, during the final months of the Irish Civil War. Moore eventually received compensation of £7,000 from the government of the Irish Free State. By this time, the brothers had become estranged, mainly because of George's unflattering portrait of Maurice in Hail and Farewell. Tension also arose from their religious differences: Maurice frequently made donations to the Roman Catholic Church from estate funds. George later sold a large part of the estate to the Irish Land Commission for £25,000.

Moore was friendly with many members of the expatriate artistic communities in London and Paris, and had a long-lasting relationship with Maud, Lady Cunard. Moore took a special interest in the education of Maud's daughter, the well-known publisher and art patron, Nancy Cunard. It has been suggested that Moore, rather than Maud's husband, Sir Bache Cunard, was Nancy's father, but this is not generally credited by historians, and it is not certain that Moore's relationship with Nancy's mother was ever more than platonic. Moore’s last novel, Aphrodite in Aulis, was published in 1930.

He died at his address of 121 Ebury Street in the London district of Belgravia in early 1933, leaving a fortune of £70,000. He was cremated in London at a service attended by Ramsay MacDonald, among others. An urn containing his ashes was interred on Castle Island in Lough Carra in view of the ruins of Moore Hall. A blue plaque commemorates his residency at his London home.

SELECTED WORKS.

·         A Modern Lover, 1883

·         A Mummer's Wife, 1885

·         A Drama in Muslin, 1886

·         A Mere Accident, 1887

·         Parnell and His Island, 1887

·         Confessions of a Young Man, 1888

·         Modern Painting, 1893

·         Esther Waters, 1894

·         Evelyn Innes, 1898

·         Sister Teresa, 1901

·         The Brook Kerith, 1916

As for Edwin Stratton Holloway, who I’m almost certain designed the handsome decoration on the front board – including a rose at the top left, a lily at the bottom right, and a central design including a heart on a ribbon and a metal censor for incense (often used in Catholic ceremonies). Above, in a background of three-leaf clovers (or just three-leaved motifs), wisps of smoke from the burning incense undulate in wispy waves, like Art Nouveau curves.

The overall condition of the hardcover book, which does not come with a dust jacket / wrapper and is I’m quite sure an unstated first American edition (the English edition came out the same year, 1901), is fair to good. The navy-blue cloth binding is a bit right-leaning, loose, cracked (at the half-title-page spread and again at the rear end pages), corner-bumped, edgeworn, spotted, smudged, frayed and damaged at the top and tail of the spine, rubbed (gilding on spine), etc. The off-white end pages are wrinkled, spotted, smudged, discolored, torn (at the bottom of the gutter of the front end pages), and with a bookstore stamp at the bottom left of the front free end page (reading “Bain Book & Stat’y Co. / 96 Yonge Street / Toronto, Ont.”). On the next two pages, the cracked binding is quite pronounced. There’s also some chipping at the right of the half-title page. The glossy frontispiece looks good, though there’s some discoloration/yellowing at the top, which may be water or other liquid damage, and there’s also chipping and age-toning on the title page, with age-toning / yellowing on it and all the other matte / bond pages in the book. There’s also some spotting, smudging, wrinkling / rippling, etc., on the pages, but no annotations, marginalia, underlining, scribbles, etc., nor any major damage or flaws in the way of clipped or missing pages, tape repairs, large tears, etc. (note that I did not look at each and every page inside and may have missed something). The three page edges are all smooth-cut, uncolored, age-toned / yellowed, spotted (with some dark ink spotting on the bottom edge), etc. The book has neither a musty nor smoky odor.

This unstated first American edition of George Moore’s novel Sister Teresa, published in 1901 by J. B. Lippincott and with a lovely gilt front board designed by Edward Stratton Holloway, is being sold AS IS, AS DESCRIBED ABOVE AND PICTURED WITHIN. I am setting what I feel is a very reasonable starting price for the auction, and there is NO RESERVE. I am also including a Buy It Now option.

Shipping and handling for the title: $5 to U.S. addresses (via Media Mail).

Note that eBay has now instituted a shipping program whereby bidders from outside the U.S. can bid on or buy all sellers' items, and the seller sends everything to an eBay facility in the US for shipping. So far, this seems to be working out well (though one item bought by someone in China never made it to its destination, though eBay very quickly refunded the buyer).  

If you want this publication sent more quickly to you (e.g., via Priority Mail in the U.S.), you must request this asap after winning or purchasing it (or beforehand, if possible), and I will adjust the amount accordingly.

I will do my best to send the book out to you no more than 2-3 business days following receipt of payment (that is, when eBay informs me that your payment has been posted to or otherwise cleared in my account). 

If you are the winner or buyer of this book, PAYMENT IS EXPECTED WITHIN ONE WEEK (7 DAYS) FROM THE PURCHASE DATE. If you cannot pay within this time frame, PLEASE contact me asap so we can work something out. I'm very flexible and understanding, but I would appreciate communication from you one way or another.

PLEASE NOTE THAT RETURNS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED NOR REFUNDS MADE FOR THIS BOOK, SO PLEASE READ MY DESCRIPTION CAREFULLY, LOOK CLOSELY AT THE PHOTOGRAPHS I’VE UPLOADED, AND ASK ME ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE ABOUT THE CONTENTS OR CONDITION OF THE ITEM. THANKS FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING! 

Thanks for looking, and please don't hesitate to email me if you have any questions about this copy of Sister Teresa, by the Irish writer George Moore.     

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