He was a master of what has been called the " theatrical conversation piece ", a sub-set of the " conversation piece " genre that arose with the middle classes in the 18th century . ( The conversation piece or " conversazione " was a relatively small, though not necessarily inexpensive, informal group portrait, often of a family group or a circle of friends.
42.
There they made the passage from being precocious, overeducated English schoolboys to being self-impressed Cambridge undergraduates who did not even consider the question of their own identities until their election to the Apostles, or Cambridge Conversazione Society, the secret organization that had been created at midcentury to counter Oxford's control of English taste, and that now included Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes among its principal members.
43.
In this book, Regan relies on a trove of unpublished material, housed in the Moore Archive at the University of Cambridge, including Moore s two dissertations, on Kant s moral philosophy; correspondence, consisting of letters that Moore wrote as well those he received; scores of papers he read at meetings of the Cambridge Conversazione Society, also known as the Apostles, and at the Sunday Essay Society; and a diary Moore kept throughout his formative years, breaking off on April 19, 1916.
