# C. L. Moore - Maker: Author - Date: 1911–1987 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/c-l-moore/ > A bank secretary in Indianapolis who hid behind her initials and wrote Jirel of Joiry — the first great woman warrior of sword and sorcery — into the pages of Weird Tales in 1934. **Why it matters:** Moore created the first major female sword-and-sorcery protagonist and some of the most sensual, unsettling weird fiction of the pulp era. Her Jirel is the ancestor of every armored heroine who strides into a game's dungeon. ## Quick answers **Who was C. L. Moore?** A bank secretary in Indianapolis who hid behind her initials and wrote Jirel of Joiry — the first great woman warrior of sword and sorcery — into the pages of Weird Tales in 1934. **When was C. L. Moore born?** C. L. Moore was born in 1911 in Indianapolis, Indiana and died in 1987. **Why does C. L. Moore matter to fantasy and games?** Moore created the first major female sword-and-sorcery protagonist and some of the most sensual, unsettling weird fiction of the pulp era. Her Jirel is the ancestor of every armored heroine who strides into a game's dungeon. ## Life Catherine Lucile Moore was born in Indianapolis on 24 January 1911. A sickly child, she read voraciously — mythology, fairy tales, Edgar Rice Burroughs — and wrote stories from an early age. She attended Indiana University for three semesters, but the Depression forced her to leave and go to business college, and she took a job as a secretary at the Fletcher Trust Company in Indianapolis. When she began selling fiction, she signed it "C. L. Moore," partly to keep her employers from discovering that their secretary was moonlighting for lurid pulp magazines, and many readers assumed she was a man. Her writing drew fan letters, including one from a young writer named Henry Kuttner, who wrote to "Mr. Moore" in admiration. They married in 1940 and formed one of the great partnerships in science fiction, writing so closely together that they said they could pick up each other's unfinished sentences. After Kuttner's death in 1958 Moore wrote for television under the name Catherine Kuttner, contributing scripts to Warner Bros. series including *Maverick* and *77 Sunset Strip*. She also earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Southern California. In 1963 she married Thomas Reggie and largely stopped writing. In later years she developed Alzheimer's disease, and she died in Hollywood on 4 April 1987. ## Work Moore's first sale, "Shambleau," appeared in [Weird Tales](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/weird-tales/) in November 1933 and made her famous overnight. It introduced Northwest Smith, a space smuggler who rescues a strange young woman on Mars — and discovers that she is a Medusa-like creature whose embrace is both ecstatic and fatal. The mix of planetary adventure, horror and eroticism was unlike anything else in the pulps; [H. P. Lovecraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/h-p-lovecraft/) was among her admirers and correspondents. Less than a year later, in October 1934, "Black God's Kiss" introduced Jirel of Joiry, the fierce, red-haired ruler of a medieval French domain. Defeated and humiliated by a conqueror, Jirel descends through a secret passage beneath her castle into a nightmarish otherworld to find a weapon for revenge — and returns with a kiss that destroys her enemy and, with him, something in herself. Four more Jirel tales followed, plus a crossover with Northwest Smith. Jirel arrived just as [Robert E. Howard](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/robert-e-howard/)'s Conan was establishing [Sword & Sorcery](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/sword-and-sorcery/), and she is generally regarded as the first female protagonist of the genre: a swordswoman with her own lands, her own pride and her own terrifying encounters with the supernatural. Moore went on to write some of the most admired science fiction of the 1940s, often jointly with Kuttner: "No Woman Born" (1944), about a dancer whose mind survives in a metal body; "Vintage Season" (1946), about time-traveling tourists; and the short novel *Judgment Night* (1943; in book form 1952). The Lewis Padgett story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" (1943) is a classic. ## Legacy Moore is not on [Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/)'s [Appendix N](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/appendix-n/), and no D&D rule can be traced to her. Her importance to games is instead one of archetype and of who gets to be the hero. Jirel's descent beneath her own castle into an alien underworld is one of the earliest dungeon journeys in [Sword & Sorcery](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/sword-and-sorcery/), and her armored, sword-wielding self-sufficiency set a pattern that later writers and game designers reached for — often without knowing its source — whenever a woman led the adventure. Critics of the genre often pair her with [Fritz Leiber](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/fritz-leiber/) as the writers who proved in the 1930s that the form could hold psychological depth and genuine strangeness. Her honors came late: the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1981, and induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998. Her Jirel stories have been repeatedly reprinted, keeping the first lady of sword and sorcery in circulation for new generations of readers — and players. ## Facts - She signed her stories 'C. L. Moore' partly so her employers at an Indianapolis bank would not learn she was writing for the pulps. - Her first professional sale, 'Shambleau' (Weird Tales, November 1933), earned her $100 and made her famous overnight. - Jirel of Joiry debuted in 'Black God's Kiss', the cover story of Weird Tales for October 1934. - With her husband Henry Kuttner she wrote under several shared pseudonyms, most famously 'Lewis Padgett'. - She was nominated to be the first woman SFWA Grand Master, but her husband withdrew the nomination because of her Alzheimer's disease. - Moore does not appear on Gygax's Appendix N. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._L._Moore) - [Wikipedia: Jirel of Joiry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jirel_of_Joiry) - [Wikipedia: Shambleau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambleau) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.