Throughout his professional life, the poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was variously celebrated and vilified for both his verse and his politics. Born in Dublin, he remained an ardent Irish patriot until his death. This eight-volume collection of Moore's memoirs, diaries and letters, edited by his friend Lord John Russell (1792–1878) and first published between 1853 and 1856, provides rare insights into a man whose genius was applauded by the Morning Chronicle as 'embracing almost all sides of imaginative literature, of criticism and philosophy'. Opening with a portrait of Moore's most loyal patron in his later years, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Volume 7 contains Moore's diary for the period 1833–44, during which he published Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion (1833) and devoted much time to his History of Ireland (1835–46).