Ruth Moore was an important Maine author of the twentieth century. She is best known for her honest portrayals of Maine people and evocative descriptions of the state. Now primarily thought of as a regional writer, Moore was a significant literary figure on the national stage during her career. Her second novel Spoonhandle spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in the company of George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

, W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...

 and Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...

. In her time, Moore was hailed as "New England's only answer to Faulkner".

Life

Moore's family first settled the Maine midcoast region in the late 18th century. She was born in 1903 on Gotts Island

Tremont, Maine

Tremont is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. It is located on the southwestern side of Mount Desert Island, known to locals as "the quietside."...

, a small island just off the southwestern tip of Mount Desert Island

Mount Desert Island

Mount Desert Island , in Hancock County, Maine, is the largest island off the coast of Maine. With an area of it is the 6th largest island in the contiguous United States. Though it is often claimed to be the third largest island on the eastern seaboard of the United States, it is actually second...

, Maine. Moore attended Albany State Teacher's College (now SUNY Albany). In 1926, Moore moved to New York City where she worked as personal secretary to Mary White Ovington

Mary White Ovington

Mary White Ovington was a suffragette, socialist, Unitarian, journalist, and co-founder of the NAACP.-Biography:...

, one of the founders of the NAACP. Ovington had spent many summers at her brother's cottage on Gotts Island and had gotten to know the Moore family. In 1929 Moore accepted a position as Assistant Campaign Manager with the NAACP working directly for the organization's head James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...

. In the summer of 1930, she traveled to the south as an NAACP investigator, where she successfully unearthed evidence that led to the freeing to two African American youths falsely accused of murder.

Moore's first published work, a poem "Voyage", appeared in a 1929 issue of the Saturday Review of Literature. Moore returned to Maine in late 1930. She briefly attended the University of Maine, before returning to New York City. From 1932-1935, Moore worked as assistant to Dr. John Haynes Holmes

John Haynes Holmes

John Haynes Holmes was a prominent Unitarian minister and pacifist, noted for his anti-war activism.-Early years:John Haynes Holmes was born in Philadelphia on November 29, 1879. He studied at Harvard, graduating in 1902, and Harvard Divinity School, which he graduated in 1904. He was then called...

, a prominent minister and associate of Ovington's. In 1935, the novelist Alice Tisdale Hobart

Alice Tisdale Hobart

Alice Tisdale Hobart born Alice Nourse in Lockport, New York, was an American novelist. Her most famous book, Oil for the Lamps of China , which was also made into a film, drew heavily on her experiences as the wife of an American oil executive in China amid the turmoil of the overthrow of the...

 hired Moore. She moved with the Hobarts, first to Washington, D.C., then to Berkeley California.

During a visit to Maine in 1940, Moore's sister introduced her to Eleanor Mayo

Eleanor Mayo

Eleanor Mayo was an American novelist of the mid twentieth century. She lived most of her life on Mount Desert Island, Maine. She was raised in Southwest Harbor, Maine. She was the life companion of the well known Maine novelist Ruth Moore. Mayo was introduced to Moore in the summer of 1940 by...

. Mayo accompanied Moore on her return to California with the intention of attending the University of California. The two would remain together until Mayo's death from a brain tumor in 1981. Moore and Mayo moved back to the East Coast in 1941. After a brief stay on Gotts Island, the couple moved to New York City. Moore quickly found a job at Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...

. Moore's debut novel, The Weir, was published in 1943. Her story "It Don't Change Much" was published in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

in 1945.

In 1946, Moore followed her earlier success with her sophomore novel, Spoonhandle. She sold the film rights to 20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

. The film, retitled Deep Waters, was filmed on location in Vinalhaven, Maine

Vinalhaven, Maine

Vinalhaven is a town located in the Fox Islands in Knox County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,235 at the 2000 census. It is home to a thriving lobster fishery and hosts a summer colony...

 and released in 1948. The sale of Spoonhandle gave Moore the financial success she needed to return to Maine. She and Mayo purchased land on the west side of Mount Desert Island and set about building their house. Though the couple traveled extensively, they never again moved away from their beloved Maine.

Moore died in nearby Bar Harbor

Bar Harbor, Maine

Bar Harbor is a town on Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population is 5,235. Bar Harbor is a famous summer colony in the Down East region of Maine. It is home to the College of the Atlantic, Jackson Laboratory and Mount Desert Island...

 in December 1989.

The regional label

For much of her literary life, Moore resisted being classified as a "regional" author. In a 1980 letter to author Sandford Phippen, she described "regional" as one of only two dirty words — the other being "interview". In the same letter, she stressed her belief that Maine "is a microcosm of everywhere else." Editor Sven Davisson writes in the introduction to Foley Craddock, "[Moore] was a regional writer only in the sense that one could call Faulkner regional, in that he wrote of his 'postage stamp of soil.' Both writers had the gift of capturing the universal in the local... A novel about New York City or Chicago is ever and always about New York City or Chicago, while a novel about Maine or Jefferson, Mississippi, in adept hands, could be about any place in the world."

Assessment of her writing

Though lauded by the middlebrow reviewers of the New York Herald

New York Herald

The New York Herald was a large distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between May 6, 1835, and 1924.-History:The first issue of the paper was published by James Gordon Bennett, Sr., on May 6, 1835. By 1845 it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the UnitedStates...

and Saturday Review, Moore drew carefully measured and mixed reviews from the more stringent New York Times. Eventually the Times quit reviewing her books after it became apparent that Moore was never going to reach the full potential shown in her first two novels. Her book sales came, for the most part, from the second-tier book clubs and through serialization in magazines with a readership drawn from lower-middle class housewives. Her book sales diminished appreciably within her lifetime, and Moore was eventually dropped by her publisher. Today her books are re-printed by a small press in Maine, and her books are often sold in Maine souvenir shops to tourists; thus, leading credence to the assertion that Moore was a Maine regional writer. However, regional writing 50 years ago was a subset of the romance genre, and as such would not accurately describe her work as the regional label would today. While her strengths rested in her masterful descriptions of Maine's impressive coastal area, Moore often veered close to hyperbole, and her metaphor usage could on occasion become confusing and bordered on unintentional self-parody. Moore's writing style was flawed by uneven character development and depth, and, tellingly, while her works were originally intended in the 1940s for an adult audience, her novels became more popular a decade later with female teen readers. This is not to say that Moore's writing has no value for the modern reader, only that like other middlebrow writers of her era, John O'Hara

John O'Hara

John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...

 comes to mind, her ego and self judgment of her writing far exceeded what she was capable of producing. Unlike O'Hara, Moore did not receive any major national writing award. Moore's work compares favorably to John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

 or Alice Tisdale Hobart

Alice Tisdale Hobart

Alice Tisdale Hobart born Alice Nourse in Lockport, New York, was an American novelist. Her most famous book, Oil for the Lamps of China , which was also made into a film, drew heavily on her experiences as the wife of an American oil executive in China amid the turmoil of the overthrow of the...

 (Moore's former employer), but not to Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Thompson Norris was an American novelist and wife of fellow writer Charles Norris, whom she wed in 1909...

 or William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

.

Novels

• The Weir (1943) ISBN 978-0-942396-48-5
• Spoonhandle (1946) ISBN 978-0-942396-49-2
• The Fire Balloon (1948) ISBN 978-0-942396-78-2
• Candlemas Bay (1950) ISBN 978-0-942396-70-6
• Jeb Ellis of Candlemas Bay (1952)
• A Fair Wind Home (1953)
• Speak to the Winds (1956) ISBN 978-0-942396-54-6
• A Walk Down Maine Street (1960) ISBN 978-0-942396-56-0
• Second Growth (1962)
• The Sea Flower (1964)
• The Gold and Silver Hooks (1969)
• "Lizzie" & Caroline (1972)
• Dinosaur Bite (1976)
• Sarah Walked Over the Mountain (1979)

Poetry

• Cold As a Dog and the Wind Northeast (1958)
• Time's Web (1972)
• The Tired Apple Tree (1990) ISBN 978-0-942396-59-1

Collections

• High Clouds Soaring, Storms Driving Low: The Letters of Ruth Moore (1993) ISBN 978-0-942396-66-9
• When Foley Craddock Tore Off My Grandfather's Thumb: The Collected Stories of Ruth Moore and Eleanor Mayo (2004) ISBN 978-0-942396-92-8

Short Fiction and Essays

• “Pennies in the Water,” The American Girl July 1942
• “The Ladies from Philadelphia,” Harper’s Bazaar August 1945
• “It Don’t Change Much,” The New Yorker October 1945
• “Farmer Takes a Newspaper,” The Saturday Review of Literature July 1948
• “The First Christmas Spent in the House Ruth Built,” Boston Sunday Post December 1963
• “The Lonely of Heart,” Puckerbrush Review 1989
• “How Come You’re Picking My Violets,” Tuesday Weekly
• “Some Notes On Clerks of the Works,” Bar Harbor Times
• “St. Columba's Mission,” Ashé Journal 3(2) Summer 2004

External links

• Creepy, Short story from Foley Craddock
• Rocks and The Offshore Islands, Two poems
• Collected Opinions, Short poem
• St. Coumba's Mission, Short story
• Ruth Moore Archeological Site, Abbe Museum