Lot & Lot's Daughter by Ward Moore

Author:Ward Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504044646
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2017-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

A Biography of Ward Moore

Ward Moore was a talented novelist and short story writer who made significant contributions to the science fiction genre with his keen eye for storytelling. Moore is best known for his novel Bring the Jubilee (1953), an alternate history in which the South won the Civil War, a classic regarded by many as one of the finest of its category.

Born Joseph Ward Moore on August 10, 1903, in Madison, New Jersey, he and his parents moved to Montreal, Canada, when Moore was five months old to be nearer to his maternal grandmother. He was brought him up in the Jewish faith, which is reflected in some of his works, particularly his two short stories, “Lot” and “Lot’s Daughter” (1953 and 1954). Moore grew up an isolated child, without much interest in school, except for the subjects of history and geography, but he found solace in books and began writing when he was eleven years old.

After high school, Moore attended Columbia College. In early adulthood in the 1920s, he worked in a series of bookstores in different cities across the United States, reveling in his love of books and meeting fellow book lovers and writers. Moore once even described himself as a “bum” because of his constant changes in jobs, reportedly saying that at various times he had “raised chickens, clerked in bookstores, built houses, contract gardened, ghosted books, copy-edited, been a book review editor, proofreader, on relief and welfare.” In 1929, he settled in California, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

Moore married Lorna Lenzi in 1942 while he was employed as a shipyard worker building Liberty Ships during WWII. This union resulted in five children: Rebekah, David, Samuel, Benyamin Haninah, and Hannah Rachel. After divorcing Lorna, he married Raylyn Moore (née Crabbe) in 1965. Their daughter, Sarah Rivkeh, is the youngest of Moore’s children. Moore and Raylyn bonded over their shared passion for writing. Raylyn published a novel in 1978, What Happened to Emily Goode After the Great Exhibition, which involved time travel, a theme central to Moore’s most famous work, Bring the Jubilee.

Though best known for his science fiction, Moore wrote in other genres as well, including criticism: book reviews and articles for Harper’s Bazaar, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jewish Horizons, and The Nation, among other publications. His first book, Breathe the Air Again (1942), was an example of the picaresque novel, an episodic storytelling format featuring adventure and, frequently, an amoral lead character (Simon Epstein is said to have been autobiographical).

Moore was known to have had strong influential relationships with his fellow writers. The poet Kenneth Rexroth, who called him “one of the historic eccentrics of American bohemia,” based a character on Moore in An Autobiographical Novel (1964). Rexroth’s depiction differs very little from Moore’s own representation of himself in Breathe the Air Again. The novelist also reportedly appeared as the character Joseph Baer in Jean Ariss’s The Quick Years (1958).

In addition to his novels, Moore wrote several critically acclaimed short stories.

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