George Moore's The Story of Madeleine de Lisle

This is the first critical edition of George Moore’s final novel, The Story of Madeleine de Lisle. The recovery of such a substantial work by a major writer is rare, and it is a crucial addition to Moore’s canon. Its publication provides a previously missing text, thus enabling a fuller critical reassessment of his work and significance. The novel begins in late nineteenth-century London with the renunciation by the eponymous heroine of her religious vocation, her subsequent marriage, and the couple’s search for a mysterious writer who has disappeared but is found to have reinvented himself as a Cathar preacher in Provence. Building on realist and melodramatic tropes, and using ideas and imagery from throughout his career, the novel develops into a meditation by Moore on his evolution as a writer.The edition includes the earlier and later versions of the typescripts which offer an unprecedented opportunity to assess Moore’s genetic critical practices at the end of his career. Also included are three essays by the editor comparing the two versions of the novel, exploring the significance of the Cathars and religious belief in the novel, and providing an overall consideration of the novel within Moore’s canon.