John Moore, Zeluco

Pam Perkins (University of Manitoba)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1789

Places

Scotland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Zeluco

, John Moore's popular and controversial 1789 novel, is almost unknown today, something that might have surprised its original readers. In his own day, Moore was compared favourably with his now more famous contemporaries, and the book's early admirers were both numerous and distinguished. Byron cited Zeluco as one of the figures that inspired his Childe Harold, and Robert Anderson, Moore's first biographer, thought that Byron and Tobias Smollett, in

Ferdinand Count Fathom

, were the only writers to compare with Moore as creators of fascinating villains. Other commentators were similarly struck by the power of the book and its profligate, coldly selfish central figure. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, whose introductions to her early nineteenth-century editions of the “standard”…

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1226 words

Citation: Perkins, Pam. "Zeluco". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 October 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13718, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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