George Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man is a major work of fin-de-siècle autobiography. It is also a protean work which eludes formal and generic classifications. The writer’s close engagement with late nineteenth-century literary and artistic history prompts Michael Bogucki to describe it as a “first-person handbook of French aesthetic movements” (214). The presentation of such intellectual and cultural contexts is, however, profoundly qualified by Moore’s ambiguous treatment of his narrator, as revealed by the book’s publication history. First published in serial form within the periodical Time during 1887, Confessions was revised for book publication in 1888. Whilst this was not uncommon practice, Moore kept revising the book at intervals during his lifetime. Some of his changes considerably altered the tenor of his work. In early versions of the text, for example, the narrator’s name...
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Citation: Creasy, Matthew. "Confessions of a Young Man". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 September 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41521, accessed 14 December 2025.]
