Thomas Moore (1779–1852): Irish poet, playwright, and satirist, who in later life turned to writing biography, including a life of his friend Byron, whose Whig politics he shared. As a poet Moore achieved commercial success with his Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little (1801); subsequent volumes included Irish Melodies (1808–1834), Intercepted Letters, or, The Twopenny Post-Bag (1813), and The Fudge Family in Paris (1818). Southey’s oriental romances Thalaba and Kehama were important influences on Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1814). However, he did not hold Moore’s work in high regard and in 1807 used an Annual Review essay on the latter’s Epistles, Odes and Other Poems (1806) to accuse him of being ‘a corrupter of the public morals’.