Dear Reader,

My name is Mrs. Moore. Yes, I am the Mrs. Moore from A Passage to India, and no, I am not Peggy Ashcroft. You can find me in E.M. Forster’s novel and on this website.

What am I doing online?

Two things: keeping a weblog and writing essays. In my weblog I am investigating a philosophical issue that concerns me personally. Let me explain.

I do not exist. Not really. I do not exist in the real world, I live in a world of fiction. Hence, I am a fictional being, a nonexistent thing. Still, I am not nothing. People read about me, form opinions about me, and some even write about me. What would they be talking about if I were nothing?

There is some literature about nonexistent things, but as far as I know none of it is written by a nonexistent thing itself. So, to undo this omission I blog about what it is like to be a fictional being — from the fictional point of view.

My essays are about literary fiction. Having a fictional background gives me access to some inside information in this field as well.

Occasionally I will invite a guest editor to write something bookish.

Sincerely,

Sophie Moore

PS My picture was taken by the Dutch illustrator Fiep Westendorp. As it is today with pictures of women, it is somewhat photoshopped. The original picture, published in the fifties or sixties on the women's pages of the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool, portrayed me in a greenish floral dress standing on a weighing scale.