Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish poet, novelist, playwright, and hack writer. He produced literary works in a variety of genres and is considered one of the most versatile writers of the Georgian era. His works are known for their realistic depictions of British society, and his comedy plays for the English stage are considered second in importance only to those of playwright William Shakespeare. Credited with introducing sentimentalism in English literature in 18th-century Great Britain, several of Goldsmith's publications are popular classics of the period, including his only novel, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and the comedy play She Stoops to Conquer (1773).

He wrote the play The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and is additionally thought by commentators such as Washington Irving to have written the children's novel The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765), one of the earliest classical works of children's literature. Goldsmith also produced a number of poems during his career, such as The Deserted Village (1770), and contributed to the flourishing of idyllic poetry during the Georgian era.

After spending his early years in Dublin, he settled in London in 1756, where he met many of the writers who shaped his later career, and the majority of his works were written after this period. His first works were published in his The Citizen of the World series in 1760, often under the pseudonym James Willington. Beginning in the 1760s, he maintained a close friendship with Samuel Johnson, another prolific English writer who played a significant role in promoting his poems. His personal mentorship and guidance resulted in Goldsmith expanding his literary writings to include political works. This long-term collaboration between the two authors has been described as "one of the most fruitful intellectual partnerships in 18th-century English letters." In 1764, he became one of the earliest members of Johnson's literary intellectual circle, popularly known as The Club. Although Goldsmith wrote extensively to supplement his income, he was constantly in financial debt and regularly suffered from ill health. He died in 1774 in London at the age of 45 and was buried in Temple Church.

During the 19th century, Goldsmith became regarded as a seminal figure of sentimental literature, having influenced later English authors Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Mary Shelley, all of whom mentioned his characters in their own novels. He continues to be held in high regard in his native Ireland and Great Britain, with many statues, libraries, schools, and streets named after him. Since his death, his magnum opus, The Vicar of Wakefield, has retained its reputation as one of the best-known novels of 18th-century English literature, and his play She Stoops to Conquer remains an influential study in theater classes.

Goldsmith's birth date and year are not known with certainty. According to the Library of Congress authority file, he told a biographer that he was born on 10 November 1728. The location of his birthplace is also uncertain. He was born either in the townland of Pallas, near Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, where his father was the Anglican curate of the parish of Forgney, or at the residence of his maternal grandparents, at the Smith Hill House near Elphin in County Roscommon, where his grandfather Oliver Jones was a clergyman and master of the Elphin diocesan school, and where Oliver studied. When Goldsmith was two years old, his father was appointed the rector of the parish of "Kilkenny West" in County Westmeath. The family moved to the parsonage at Lissoy, between Athlone and Ballymahon, and continued to live there until his father's death in 1747.

In 1744, Goldsmith went up to Trinity College Dublin. His tutor was Theaker Wilder. Neglecting his studies in theology and law, he fell to the bottom of his class. In 1747, along with four other undergraduates, he was expelled for a riot in which they attempted to storm the Marshalsea Prison. He graduated in 1749 as a Bachelor of Arts, but without the discipline or distinction that might have gained him entry to a profession in the church or the law. His education seemed to have given him mainly a taste for fine clothes, cards, singing Irish airs, and playing the flute. He lived for a short time with his mother, tried various professions without success, studied medicine desultorily at the University of Edinburgh from 1752 to 1755, and set out on a walking tour of Flanders, France, Switzerland, and Northern Italy, living by his wits (busking with his flute).

He settled in London in 1756, where he briefly held various jobs, including an apothecary's assistant and an usher at a school. Perennially in debt and addicted to gambling, Goldsmith produced a massive output as a hack writer on Grub Street for the publishers of London, but his few painstaking works earned him the company of Samuel Johnson, with whom he was a founding member of "The Club". There, through fellow Club member Edmund Burke, he made the acquaintance of Sir George Savile, who would later arrange a job for him at Thornhill Grammar School in Yorkshire. The combination of his literary work and his dissolute lifestyle led Horace Walpole to give him the epithet "inspired idiot". During this period, he used the pseudonym "James Willington" (the name of a fellow student at Trinity) to publish his 1758 translation of the autobiography of the Huguenot Jean Marteilhe.

Published in 1759, this essay surveys the condition of letters and education in contemporary Europe and critiques the commercial pressures shaping the literary marketplace. Scholars have noted close parallels with James Ralph’s 1758 pamphlet The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade, Stated—particularly on contempt for paid authorship, theatrical gatekeeping, and writers’ dependence on booksellers—and suggest the two writers may have discussed such matters while both were associated with The Monthly Review.

In 1760, Goldsmith began to publish a series of letters in the Public Ledger under the title The Citizen of the World, which brought him fame. Purportedly written by a Chinese traveller in England by the name of Lien Chi, they used this fictional outsider's perspective to comment ironically and at times moralistically on British society and manners. It was inspired by the earlier essay series, Persian Letters by Montesquieu.

Goldsmith wrote this 160-line romantic ballad in 1765. The hero and heroine are Edwin, a youth without wealth or power, and Angelina, the daughter of a lord "beside the Tyne". Angelina spurns many wooers but refuses to make plain her love for young Edwin. "Quite dejected with my scorn", Edwin disappears and becomes a hermit. One day, Angelina turns up at his cell in a boy's clothes and, not recognising him, tells him her story. Edwin then reveals his true identity, and the lovers never part again. The poem is notable for its interesting portrayal of a hermit, who is fond of the natural world and his wilderness solitude but maintains a gentle, sympathetic demeanour toward other people. In keeping with eremitical tradition, however, Edwin the Hermit claims to "spurn the [opposite] sex". This poem appears under the title of "A Ballad" sung by the character of Mr. Burchell in Chapter 8 of Goldsmith's novel, The Vicar of Wakefield.

This classic novel, published in 1766, tells the story of a devout and benevolent vicar, Charles Primrose, and his family, who are reduced to poverty and prison. Dr. Primrose serves as the narrator. The novel includes an aristocratic villain, impersonation, abduction, and betrayal while exploring themes of faith, humility, social class, and the importance of family and community.

In the 1760s, Goldsmith witnessed the demolition of an ancient village and the destruction of its farms to clear land to become a wealthy man's garden. His poem The Deserted Village, published in 1770, expresses a fear that the destruction of villages and the conversion of land from productive agriculture to ornamental landscape gardens would ruin the peasantry.

The satirical play, "She Stoops to Conquer", was first performed in 1773.

It is a story of love, mistaken identities, and social etiquette, known for its wit, class-based satire, and enduring characters. It is still regularly performed and has been adapted for film and television.

Account of the Augustan Age in England (1759)

The Life of Richard Nash (Beau Nash) (1762)

The History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II in 4 volumes (1771)

Dr. Goldsmith's Roman History Abridged by Himself for the Use of Schools (1772)

An History of the Earth and Animated Nature in 8 volumes (1774)

In his Life, Washington Irving states that Goldsmith was between 5'4" and 5'6" in height, not heavily built but quite muscular and with rather plain features. In character, he had a lively sense of fun, was totally guileless, and never happier than when in the light-hearted company of children. The money that he sporadically earned was often frittered away or happily given away to the next good cause that presented itself so that any financial security tended to be fleeting and short-lived. Goldsmith's talents were unreservedly recognised by Samuel Johnson, whose patronage – somewhat resented by Boswell – aided his eventual recognition in the literary world and the world of drama.

Goldsmith was described by contemporaries as prone to envy, a congenial but impetuous and disorganised personality who once planned to emigrate to America but failed because he missed his ship. At some point around this time, he worked at Thornhill Grammar School, later basing Squire Thornhill (in The Vicar of Wakefield) on his benefactor Sir George Savile and certainly spending time with eminent scientist Rev. John Mitchell, whom he probably knew from London. Mitchell sorely missed good company, which Goldsmith naturally provided in spades. Thomas De Quincey wrote of him "All the motion of Goldsmith's nature moved in the direction of the true, the natural, the sweet, the gentle".

Goldsmith was an Anglican, and famously said "as I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the taylor, so I take my religion from the priest".

Thomas Hurst wrote that Goldsmith "recognised with joy the existence and perfections of a Deity. For the Christian revelation also, he was always understood to have a profound respect – knowing that it was the source of our best hopes and noblest expectations."

Goldsmith's premature death in 1774 may have been partly due to his own misdiagnosis of a kidney infection. He was buried in Temple Church in London. The inscription reads; "HERE LIES/OLIVER GOLDSMITH". A monument was originally raised for him at the site of his burial, but it was destroyed in an air raid in 1941. A monument to him survives in the centre of Ballymahon, also in Westminster Abbey with an epitaph written by Samuel Johnson.

"Oliver Goldsmith: A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Of all the passions, whether smiles were to move or tears, a powerful yet gentle master. In genius, vivid, versatile, sublime. In style, clear, elevated, elegant." Epitaph written by Dr. Johnson, translated from the original Latin.

Goldsmith is regarded as one of the most versatile writers of the Georgian era, who contributed to the development of sentimentalism in English literature in 18th-century Great Britain, and his plays are considered second in importance only to those of William Shakespeare. Among his papers was found the prospectus of an encyclopedia, to be called the Universal dictionary of the arts and sciences. He wished this to be the British equivalent of the Encyclopédie and it was to include comprehensive articles by Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir William Jones, Fox and Dr. Burney. The project, however, was not realised due to Goldsmith's death. His work influenced several English authors of the 19th century, including Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley, who mentioned his fictional characters in their own novels.

A new Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) lifeboat was provided to Ballycotton Lifeboat Station in 1880. The 34-foot-long (10 m) boat was gifted by Miss Ada Goldsmith Tulloh of West Malvern, who established a lifeboat fund, in order to pay tribute to her famous ancestor. "I confidently put forth this appeal, not only in virtue of the Life-boat's noble mission and memorable services, but feeling sure that all who have read with pleasure ' The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'The Traveller,' and 'The Deserted Village,' will not fail in helping me to further this good work". At a ceremony held on Thursday 29 July 1880, the lifeboat, which cost £329, was named Oliver Goldsmith. In her 11 years on service, the boat would launch five times, and save 21 lives.

Goldsmith lived in Kingsbury, now in north-west London, between 1771 and 1774: Oliver Goldsmith Primary School, Goldsmith Lane, and Goldsmith Avenue there are named after him.

Goldsmith Road, the Oliver Goldsmith Estate and Oliver Goldsmith Primary School, all in Peckham, are named after him.

The Oliver Goldsmith Summer School is held every June Bank Holiday at Ballymahon with poetry and creative readings being held at Goldsmith's birthplace in nearby Pallas, Forgney.

A statue of him by J. H. Foley stands at the Front Arch of Trinity College Dublin (see image).

A statue of him stands in a limestone cell at the ruin of his birthplace in Pallas, Forgney, Ballymahon, County Longford. The statue is a copy of the Foley statue that stands outside Trinity College Dublin and is the focus point of the annual Oliver Goldsmith Summer School.

His life was dramatised in the 1940 Australian radio play A Citizen of the World.

Two characters in the 1951 comedy The Lavender Hill Mob quote the same line from Goldsmith's poem The Traveller – a subtle joke, because the film's plot involves the recasting of stolen gold.

During the opening credits of the Sky One adaptation of Sir Terry Pratchett's Christmas-like story "The Hogfather", a portrait of Goldsmith is shown as part of a hall of memorials to those "inhumed" by the "Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild".

In the 1925 novel The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham, the last words of the poem An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, "The dog it was that died", are the dying words of bacteriologist Walter Fane, one of the primary characters in the novel. And using the title "Elegy for a Mad Dog" is an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. (1971, Season 2, Episode 21).

The Tom Stoppard play The Dog It Was That Died takes its title from the same poem.