Gerald Moore (22 August 1924 – 27 December 2022) was an English

independent scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...

Biography

Moore was born in

Chiswick, London Chiswick ( ) is a district of west London, England. It contains Hogarth's House, the former residence of the 18th-century English artist William Hogarth; Chiswick House, a neo-Palladian villa regarded as one of the finest in England; and Full ...

, to Rex Moore, an exhibitions officer, and his wife, Norah (nee Sturdee), an actor, on 22 August 1924. He went to

Dauntsey's School Dauntsey's School is a public school (independent boarding and day school) for pupils aged 11–18 in the village of West Lavington, Wiltshire, England. The school was founded in 1542, in accordance with the will of William Dauntesey, a maste ...

in Wiltshire, and when he was 17 years old joined the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

, serving in the Atlantic and Arctic convoys during World War 2. He later studied at

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican m ...

, where he earned a first-class degree in English. Moore taught at many universities, including the Sussex,

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

Makerere Makerere ( ) is a neighborhood in the city of Kampala, Uganda's capital city. The name also applies to the hill on which this neighborhood is perched; one of the original seven hills that constituted Kampala at the time of its founding, in the e ...

, Ife, Port Harcourt,

Jos Jos is a city in the north central region of Nigeria. The city has a population of about 900,000 residents based on the 2006 census. Popularly called "J-Town", it is the administrative capital and largest city of Plateau State. During British ...

and the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

. His last teaching post was at

Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into pr ...

. He was primarily a scholar of contemporary African

anglophone Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest langua ...

and

francophone French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the ...

poetry. With

Ulli Beier Chief Horst Ulrich Beier, commonly known as Ulli Beier (30 July 1922 – 3 April 2011), was a German editor, writer and scholar who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and po ...

, he edited the influential ''Modern Poetry from Africa'' (1963), a comprehensive anthology, republished in 1984 as ''

The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry ''The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry'' (in an earlier 1963 edition ''Modern Poetry from Africa'') is a 1984 poetry anthology edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier. It consists mainly of poems written in English and English translations of F ...

''.

Personal life

In 1949, he married Joy Fisher, a librarian, with whom he had three children. The couple divorced in 1973, and Moore subsequently married Miriam Garzitto. Moore lived in

Worthing, Sussex Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hov ...

, before moving to

Udine Udine ( , ; fur, Udin; la, Utinum) is a city and ''comune'' in north-eastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Alps (''Alpi Carniche''). Its population was 100,514 in 2012, 176,000 with ...

in Italy. He later returned to Sussex, in 2010, after his wife Miriam died. Moore died on 27 December 2022, at the age of 98.

Major works

*''Seven African Writers''. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. *''Modern Poetry from Africa'' (ed. with Ulli Beier). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963 (Penguin African Books). Revised as ''The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry'', 4th edition, 1999. *''African Literature and the Universities''. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press (for Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1965. *''The Chosen Tongue: English Writing in the Tropical World''. Harlow: Longmans, 1969. *''

Wole Soyinka Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded t ...

''. London: Evans Brothers, 1971. *''Twelve African Writers''. London: Hutchinson, 1980 (University Library for Africa). As translator: * Beti, Mongo. ''The Poor Christ of Bomba''. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland, 2005. *Beti, Mongo. ''Remember Ruben.'' Heinemann, London, 1980 *

Tchicaya U Tam'si Tchicaya U Tam'si (born Gérald-Félix Tchicaya 25 August 1931 - 22 April 1988) was a Congolese author; his pen name means "small paper that speaks for its country" in Kikongo. Life Born in Mpili, near Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa (n ...

. ''Selected Poems.'' Heinemann, London, 1970 * Lopes, Henri. ''The Laughing Cry.'' Readers International, London, 1987

References

1924 births 2022 deaths Academic staff of the University of Port Harcourt Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge British expatriates in Hong Kong British expatriates in Nigeria British expatriates in the United States British expatriates in Uganda British literary critics People from Chiswick {{UK-academic-bio-stub