
Luke Batterham
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![MOORE (GEORGE) Autograph Manuscript of Chapters XX - XXII of Esther Waters, [c.1894] image 1](/_next/image.jpg?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg1.bonhams.com%2Fimage%3Fsrc%3DImages%2Flive%2F2011-10%2F10%2F8433856-129-2.jpg&w=2400&q=75)
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PART OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF ESTHER WATERS: ten chapters of Esther Waters were serialized 'Passages from the Life of a Workgirl' in The Pall Mall Gazette for October 1893, and the complete book published, after extensive further revision, in March 1894. It made Moore a celebrity overnight, and has become a cornerstone of nineteenth-century literary realism: 'Esther Waters (1894) was... a story which broke new ground in its presentation of its subject matter by making a servant the sympathetic title-character. This book, with its non-judgemental depiction of "the fallen woman", is considered by many to be Moore's greatest achievement, as well as a turning point in the English novel. It was his most successful book and has not been out of print since its first publication. At the 1994 Cheltenham festival it was awarded a spoof centennial "1894 Booker prize"' (Edwin Gilcher, ODNB).
The forty-nine chapters of the manuscript were dispersed early on, apparently by 1899, and are now lost or scattered in private and public collections, including Harvard. The present manuscript headed "Chapter 16" corresponds to Chapters XX to XXII in the first edition of 1894. An early working draft, our text varies considerably from that published in 1894. Chapter XX introduces Esther's new employers, the Sadleys (afterwards renamed the Bingleys by Moore), "an ugly dissenting family, hard, commonplace, exacting from all the uttermost farthing".