George Moore was an Irish landowner who received his indoctrination into the world of art and literature in France. His encounter there with the realist movement led to the first three truly realistic (defined as against the prevailing moralism and/or melodrama of Victorian fiction) novels in English literature proper: A Modern Lover, A Mummer's Wife and Esther Waters.

Of the three, Esther Waters is the most fully developed and it is certainly the most engaging for a modern reader. In it, a woman has a child out of wedlock, and not only survives (through a variety of trials that are dispassionately but unflinchingly depicted) but in a manner of speaking prospers (Compare this for example with Elizabeth Gaskell's *Ruth*, written some 40+ years earlier).

A great read. An important milestone in the transition from moralism to realism in English fiction. An Irish writer who played an important role in the Irish literary renaissance in the early years of the 19th century.

Well worth the read.