Few people have had greater influence on what it means to be Irish than Thomas Moore. Through his Irish Melodies, Moore created an iconography of silenced harps, misty landscapes and round towers that lives on today, more than a century and a half after his death. In Bard of Erin, Ronan Kelly tells the story of Moore's extraordinary life. From humble beginnings in Dublin (the son of a Catholic grocer) to glittering success in London (at one point his popularity was eclipsed only by that of Sir Walter Scott and his close friend Lord Byron), Moore lived in the glow of fame and under the burden of national expectation. Ronan Kelly's biography is a gripping and definitive account of a great romantic figure.