Ruth Moore

Ruth Moore (1903–1989) 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, W. Somerset Maugham and Robert Penn Warren. In her time, Moore was hailed as "New England's only answer to Faulkner".

Moore's family first settled the Maine midcoast region in the late 18th century. She was born in 1903 on Gotts Island, a small island just off the southwestern tip of Mount Desert Island, 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, 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. 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, a prominent minister and associate of Ovington's. In 1935, the novelist Alice Tisdale Hobart hired Moore. She moved with the Hobarts, first to Washington, D.C., then to Berkeley California.

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