SOURCE: An introduction to In Minor Keys: The Uncollected Short Stories of George Moore by George Moore, Fourth Estate, 1985, pp. 11-52.

In the following excerpt, Eakin and Gerber provide an overview of Moore's short stories and maintain that the concept of "in minor keys" seems to be his "way of designating a story in which he implies a significant moral idea marked by a subdued or underwritten ending."

'Under the Fan' (February 1882), Moore's first known published story, may well have had its origins in some of the aborted works begun before Moore left Paris and work he began in the Strand lodging-house upon his return to London. One early source for the story could have been The Aristocracy of Vice, the aborted novel he had started in Paris and mentions enthusiastically in an undated letter to his mother: "I have a novel on hand the title is Aristocracy...