Born, [Catherine Grace Frances Moody] at East Retford, 1799. Early literary precocity. Married to Capt. Charles Arthur Gore, 15 Feb. 1823. “The School for Coquettes” produced at Haymarket Theatre, 1831; “Lords and Commons,” at Drury Lane; “The King’s Seal,” 1835; “King O’Neil,” 1835; “The Queen’s Champion,” 1835; “The Maid of Croissy,” 1835. Actively employed in novel-writing, also composed music. Lived in France for some years from 1832. Comedy, “Quid pro Quo,” won £500 prize offered by Webster at Haymarket Theatre; produced there, 18 June 1844. Died, at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, 29 Jan. 1861, buried in Kensal Green cemetery. Works: “Theresa Marchmont,” 1824; “The Bond,” 1824; “The Lettre de Cachet” (anon.), 1827; “The Reign of Terror” (anon.), 1827; “Hungarian Tales” (anon.), 1829; “Romance of Real Life” (anon.), 1829; “Women as they are; or, the Manners of the Day” (anon.), 1830 (2nd edn. same year); “Pin Money” (anon.), 1831; “The Tuileries” (anon.), 1831; “Mothers and Daughters” (anon.), 1831; “The Historical Traveller,” 1831; “The Fair of May Fair” (anon.), 1832; “The Opera” (anon.), 1832; “The Sketch-Book of Fashion” (anon.), 1833; “Polish Tales” (anon.), 1833; “The Hamiltons” (anon.), 1834; “The Maid of Croissy,” 1835; “King O’Neil,” 1835; “The Diary of a Désennuyée” (anon.), 1836; “Mrs. Armytage” (anon.), 1836; “Memoirs of a Peeress” (anon.), 1837; “Stokeshill Place” (anon.), 1837; “The Heir of Selwood” (anon.), 1838; “Mary Raymond,” 1838; “The Rose Fancier’s Manual,” 1838; “The Woman of the World” (anon.), 1838; “The Cabinet Minister” (anon.), 1839; “The Courtier of the Days of Charles II.,” 1839; “Dacre of the South,” 1840; “The Dowager,” 1840; “Preferment,” 1840; “Cecil” (anon.), 1841; “Cecil a Peer” (sequel to preceding), 1841; “Greville,” 1841; “The Soldier of Lyons,” 1841; “The Ambassador’s Wife,” 1842; “The Man of Fortune,” 1842; “Ormington” (anon.), 1842; “The Banker’s Wife,” 1843; “The Inundation,” 1843; “Modern Chivalry,” 1843; “The Money-Lender,” 1843; “Quid pro Quo” (under initials: C. F. G.), 1844; “Agathonia” (anon.), 1844; “The Birthright,” 1844; “The Popular Member,” 1844; “Self” (anon.), 1845; “The Snow Storm,” 1845; “The Story of a Royal Favourite,” 1845; “The Débutante,” 1846; “New Year’s Day,” 1846 (2nd edn. same year); “Men of Capital,” 1846; “Peers and Parvenus,” 1846; “Sketches of English Character,” 1846; “The Queen of Denmark,” 1846; “Castles in the Air,” 1847; “Temptation and Atonement,” 1847; “The Diamond and the Pearl,” 1848; “The Inundation,” [1848]; “A Good Night’s Rest,” 1852; “The Dean’s Daughter,” 1853; “The Lost Son,” 1854; “Progress and Prejudice,” 1854; “Mammon,” 1855; “A Life’s Lessons,” 1856; “The Two Aristocracies,” 1857; “Heckington,” 1857. She contributed to: “The Tales of all Nations,” 1827; “Heath’s Picturesque Annual,” 1832; “The Edinburgh Tales” (vols. i–iii.), 1845; “The Tale Book,” 1859. Posthumous: “The Royal Favourite,” 1863. She edited: “The Lover and the Husband,” 1841; “The Woman of a Certain Age,” 1841; “Fascination,” 1842; “Modern French Life,” 1842; “The Queen of Denmark,” 1846; and probably was the translator of Saintine’s “Picciola,” 1837.

General

  Many of Mrs. Gore’s novels, are works in which the present state of society and manners is more or less clearly impressed: they are pictures of the time, and no more.

  By the way, how is it that your certainly very clever friend, Mrs. Gore, cannot do more for me than skim along the surface? I never knew so much real talent in seizing the outside of characters, and drawing magic lantern pictures, so entirely fail in creating permanent interest. I have sent home “Mrs. Armytage” a second time, without getting quite half through, and yet how clever the individual portraits!

  It is well known in the literary circles that Mrs. Gore is the author of that clever, but surpassingly impudent book, “Cecil.” We believe she has never avowed it, and has rather, on the contrary, kept up a little mystification about it. But there is really no doubt on the subject. She wrote the story, and Mr. Beckford helped her to the learning. The public have been often perplexed by Mrs. Gore’s Greek and Latin, which, although they were never paraded so impertinently as the polyglott pretensions of Lady Morgan, were still remote enough from the ordinary course of female accomplishments to startle the public. Where they came from on former occasions we know not; but in this instance they may be referred to Mr. Beckford, together with the still more recondite scraps of far-off tongues that are scattered through the work. “Cecil” is a perfect representation of the worst, but certainly the most dazzling aspect of Mrs. Gore’s genius. It abounds in flashy, high-mettled fashionable slang, and is thrown off in such a vein of upsetting egotism, with such a shew of universal knowledge, and in a style of such dashing effrontery, that it carries the multitude fairly off their legs. There never was a novel written at such a slapping pace. The fearlessness of the execution diverts attention from its deficiencies as a work of art, and helps in a great degree to conceal the real poverty of the conception. But books of this class will not endure the test of re-perusal. Their shallowness becomes palpable at the second reading, even to those who have not sufficient discernment to detect it at once. As there is nothing so intolerable as dullness, so there is nothing so attractive as vivacity. And this is the predominant quality which has ensured the success of “Cecil.” The unflagging gaiety by which the story is lighted up, puts the reader into the best possible humour with himself and the author.

  Is one of the most popular of the living female novelists of England; the number of her works would give her celebrity, had she no other claim. She is, however, a powerful and brilliant writer, and it seems almost a paradox to assert, that her surprising fertility of imagination should be an obstacle to her attaining the high literary reputation she merits. But her works are so unfailingly presented to the public, so constantly poured out, that they are received like the flowers and fruits, acceptable and delightful, but not to be sought for and praised, as some rare occasional production. We revel in our showers of roses, but they are commonplace, while we make a wonder of some prickly production of a foreign bed.

  The success of this popular novelist in her sketches of the prevailing tone of fashionable society is admitted by the ablest critics.

  Mrs. Gore long continued to furnish one or two novels a year. She had seen much of the world both at home and abroad, and was never at a loss for character or incident. The worst of her works must be pronounced clever. Their chief value consists in their lively caustic pictures of fashionable and high society. Besides her long array of regular novels, Mrs. Gore contributed short tales and sketches to the periodicals, and was perhaps unparalleled for fertility. All her works were welcome to the circulating libraries. They are mostly of the same class—all pictures of existing life and manners; but the want of genuine feeling, of passion and simplicity, in her living models, and the endless frivolities of their occupations and pursuits, makes us sometimes take leave of Mrs. Gore’s fashionable triflers in the temper with which Goldsmith parted from Beau Tibbs—“The company of fools may at first make us smile, but at last never fails of rendering us melancholy.”

  Her writings are characterised by great cleverness in invention, lively satire, shrewd insight into character, and keen observation of life. Their popularity at the time was great, and they possess historic value as a faithful picture of the life and pursuits of the English upper classes during a particular period. George IV observed respecting “The Manners of the Day, or Women as they are,” that it was “the best bred and most amusing novel published in his remembrance.”

  She still continued to write during the earlier portion of the Victorian period, but her style and manner were essentially of the past. The fashionable novel, as she understood and executed it, was of Almacks and that transition period between the wild days of the Regency and the new-born decorum of the young Queen’s purified court.

  The fashionable novel proper came, however, after a while, to be almost stereotyped as to certain of its features. The stock incidents included duels and elopements, and the third volume always ended with a wedding. There was of necessity a hero, who was de rigueur handsome and morally perfect, and a heroine who was beautiful and good; in most cases a villain was added, who invariably came to a bad end. One of the first to elevate this type of writing to almost the highest level whereto it could attain, was Mrs. Catherine Grace Gore.

  Where is that witty old ghost of the Silver Fork school, Mrs. Gore.

  The novel of high life that thus skimmed the surface of things fell into the hands of women, and degenerated into trash and rhapsody…. The best of the class are the one hundred or more novels and tales written by Mrs. Catherine Gore between 1824 and 1862. About many of them that have come in my way is an air of profound learning. Not infrequently three languages are represented in a motto standing at the head of a chapter; while the language within is a mixture of aristocratic English and stock French phrases. Mrs. Gore’s subject was commonly club life, ennui, fribbledom, and the political questions of the hour. The writer who had rejuvenated this kind of fiction, and given it a political bias, transformed it.