James Harry Manson Moore (16 December 1929 – 11 May 2017) was a Cornish author. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a leading authority on G. I. Gurdjieff.

Life and career

Moore was born in

Saltash Saltash (Cornish: Essa) is a town and civil parish in south Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It had a population of 16,184 in 2011 census. Saltash faces the city of Plymouth over the River Tamar and is popularly known as "the Gateway to Corn ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

in December 1929. He was a leading authority on G. I. Gurdjieff, becoming active in practical and thematic Gurdjieff studies from 1956, after studying with Kenneth Walker and later with Henriette H. Lannes ("Madame Lannes") as his Gurdjieffian teacher and mentor between October 1957 and December 1978. His first major study, ''Gurdjieff and Mansfield'' (1980), examined the lives of Gurdjieff and the short story writer

Katherine Mansfield Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer, essayist and journalist, widely considered one of the most influential and important authors of the modernist movement. Her works are celebra ...

. Moore's book challenged the persistent belief that Gurdjieff was somehow responsible when Mansfield, who arrived at Gurdjieff's institute in France suffering from terminal tuberculosis, died within a few months while still his guest. From 1981 to 1994, Moore was responsible for gathering and leading new students in the Gurdjieff Society in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. He contributed to research for the 363-page ''Gurdjieff: an Annotated Bibliography'' (1985) compiled by J. Walter Driscoll and the Gurdjieff Foundation of California. During this period he was also a pupil of Henri Tracol and Maurice Desselle. A confessed admirer of Gurdjieff and active Gurdjieffian for his entire adult life, Moore was the author of the biography ''Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth'' (1991). It was republished in 1999 with a revised introduction, under the title ''Gurdjieff: A biograph''. In 1994, Moore published "Moveable Feasts: the Gurdjieff Work" in ''Religion Today'', challenging certain significant innovations in Gurdjieffian theory and practice introduced worldwide by

Jeanne de Salzmann Jeanne de Salzmann (born Jeanne-Marie Allemand) often addressed as Madame de Salzmann (January 26, 1889, Reims – May 24, 1990, Paris) was a French-Swiss dance teacher and a close pupil of the spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff. Life Jean ...

, the Gurdjieff Foundation's de facto leader. (See external links for text of this article.) After his departure from the Foundation's Gurdjieff Society in London, Moore led an independent Gurdjieff Studies group. In "Gurdjieffian Confessions" (2005), Moore briefly sketched his personal life and provided candid and vivid glimpses of his 38 years as a member of The Gurdjieff Society in London, between 1956 and 1994. In 2011 Moore published "Eminent Gurdjieffians: Lord Pentland";

John Pentland John Williamson Pentland is a former Scottish Labour Party politician. He was the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Motherwell and Wishaw constituency from 2011 to 2016. Pentland worked as a welder with Butters Brothers, Craign ...

was Henry John Sinclair, 2nd Baron Pentland (1907–1984). Moore's 100-page biography was written in the style of

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...

's compact 1918 classic "

Eminent Victorians ''Eminent Victorians'' is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918, and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and ...

". John Pentland was a follower of P. D. Ouspensky for more than a decade, then associated with G. I. Gurdjieff in Paris during his last two years, 1948–1949. Lord Pentland was president of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York between its founding in 1953 and his death in 1984. Moore died in

Ealing Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Ealing was histor ...

in May 2017 at the age of 87.Probate Search: Moore, James Harry Manson
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Selected works

* (1980) ''Gurdjieff and Mansfield'' * (1991) ''Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth'', * (2005) ''Gurdjieffian Confessions: a self remembered'' * (2011) ''Eminent Gurdjieffians: Lord Pentland''

References

External links

James Moore's website

Moveable Feasts: the Gurdjieff Work, first published in Religion Today, Vol. IX No. 2, Spring 1994
Gurdjieff Studies Group

Moore's concise encyclopedia article on Gurdjieff

Moore's article "P. D. Ouspensky: an Appreciation"

gurdjieff-bibliography.com contains several articles by James Moore, excerpts from his books and a bibliography of his Gurdjieffian writings
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moore, James 1929 births 2017 deaths 20th-century English writers 21st-century English writers English male non-fiction writers Fellows of the Royal Asiatic Society Fourth Way Non-fiction writers from Cornwall People from Saltash