C.L. Moore

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-31

Catherine Lucille Moore was born January 24, 1911, in Indianapolis, Indiana. A chronically ill child, she found refuge in imaginative literature by authors such as Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. She began studying English at Indiana University in 1929 but was forced to leave after three semesters due to the financial pressures of the Great Depression, subsequently working as a secretary at a trust company in Indianapolis. Moore began her professional writing career in 1933, adopting the androgynous byline "C. L. Moore" specifically to keep her fiction writing hidden from her employer. Publishing in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, she created two enduringly influential characters: Northwest Smith, a roguish interplanetary adventurer whose stories blended science fiction with cosmic horror, and Jirel of Joiry, widely recognized as one of the first female protagonists in sword-and-sorcery fiction. Her celebrated debut story "Shambleau" (1933) became one of the most frequently anthologized works of the pulp era. In 1940, Moore married fellow writer Henry Kuttner, who had initially contacted her under the mistaken belief that "C. L. Moore" was a man; the two collaborated extensively until Kuttner's death in 1958, publishing acclaimed stories such as "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" and "Vintage Season" under joint pseudonyms including Lewis Padgett. After a brief career as a television scriptwriter, Moore largely retired from writing following her 1963 remarriage. She received the Gandalf Grand Master Award and World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1981, and was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998.

Universe(s)

Books

• Jirel of Joiry (1969) · Jirel of Joiry Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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