Oliver Goldsmith

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Oliver Goldsmith, oil painting from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1770; in the National … (credit: Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire. — died April 4, 1774, London, Eng.) Irish-born British essayist, poet, novelist, and dramatist. Goldsmith attended Trinity College in Dublin before studying medicine in Edinburgh. Settling in London, he began writing essays, some of which were collected in The Citizen of the World (1762). In 1764 he became an original member of Samuel Johnson's famous Club. He won a reputation as a poet with The Traveller (1764), confirmed by his famous pastoral elegy The Deserted Village (1770). The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) revealed his skill as a novelist. The charming farce She Stoops to Conquer (1773) was his most effective play. Noted for his exceptionally graceful, lively style, Goldsmith was a friend of many literary lights of his day, who agreed that he was one of the oddest personalities of his time.

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The British poet, dramatist, novelist, and essayist Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) wrote, translated, or compiled more than 40 volumes. The works for which he is remembered are marked by good sense, moderation, balance, order, and intellectual honesty.

The fifth child of a country rector in Ireland, Oliver Goldsmith entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1745 and earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1749. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1752-1753 but did not take a degree. After further medical training at the University of Leiden, he traveled on the Continent, not to return to London until 1756, when he attempted to establish a medical practice.

Goldsmith soon began to supplement his meager income from medicine by contributing reviews and essays to such popular journals as the Monthly and the Critical. His first book, An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759), included an important essay on the English stage. By the mid-1760s Goldsmith, or "Goldy" as Dr. Johnson fondly nicknamed him, had established a steady income as a compiler. An original member of the famous "Club" founded by Dr. Johnson in 1764, Goldsmith enjoyed the friendship of such 18th century notables as Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who later wrote a brief biographical sketch of him. Goldsmith's inability to handle his money, his extravagance, his generosity, and his habit of borrowing money from his friends kept the stocky, pockmarked author in debt until the end of his life. Indeed, he is said to have left debts amounting to £2,000.

Goldsmith made his early literary reputation as an essayist. The eight weekly numbers of the Bee (1759), which contain some excellent small poems, dramatic criticism, moral tales, and serious and fanciful discourses, exhibit his preoccupation with vivid and rich human detail and his felicitous style. Perhaps his finest sustained work as an essayist, however, was The Citizen of the World (1762), which had appeared serially in the Public Ledger in 1760-1761. Goldsmith employed the popular 18th-century device of a foreign traveler commenting in letters to his home country upon the strange customs of the lands through which he passed. These "Chinese Letters" exhibit Goldsmith at his relaxed, playful, and graceful best.

Poetry and Fiction

The Traveller (1764), Goldsmith's first major poem, expresses such conventional ideas of his age as the vanity of human wishes and despair in the search for happiness. Best described as a philosophic-descriptive lyric, the poem is a panoramic, imaginative tour through Italy, Switzerland, and France. His poetic masterpiece, The Deserted Village (1770), has often and erroneously been mistaken as a wholly autobiographical poem. Picturing the economic difficulties of rural life, the dangers of luxury, and "trade's unfeeling train," the poem expresses current 18th-century ideas in so personal, moving, and aphoristic a fashion that it remains one of the most frequently quoted poems in the English language. Both poems exhibit Goldsmith's mastery of the heroic couplet, the major poetic form of the period. He left a third long poem entitled Retaliation unfinished at his death.

Goldsmith's one novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, was received indifferently upon its publication in 1766 but soon became popular and remained the most widely read of all the 18th-century novels for the next 100 years. According to James Boswell, Dr. Johnson saved the distraught Goldsmith from a debtors' prison by selling this manuscript, the only one he could find in Goldsmith's lodgings, for £60.

The brief novel, which leads Dr. Primrose and his family from disaster to fresh disaster, has greater structural and thematic unity than most critics have acknowledged. Its greatest appeal, however, lies in its gentle and tolerant humor, the attractiveness of Dr. Primrose's character, the combined pathos and irony of the narrative, and Goldsmith's graceful prose style.

Plays and Other Works

Goldsmith's first play, The Good Natur'd Man, found little favor when it was finally produced in 1768. While it has important historical interest because it marks a major turn away from the sentimental comedy that had dominated the 18th-century stage, it preaches a prudent benevolence throughout which has little appeal for the modern reader.

The second of his plays, She Stoops to Conquer (1773), is by far the more impressive of the two. Despite a farcical plot and the patent absurdities of Young Marlowe's mistaken assumption that the Hardcastle mansion is an inn and of Mrs. Hardcastle's delusion that her husband is a highwayman, the play's wit, good humor, and lively characterizations made it an immediate success and have given it continuing popularity. In their search for marriage and social position, the characters have a warmth and charm quite atypical of most plays of the period.

As compiler, author, and translator, Goldsmith participated in a host of commercial publishing ventures during his lifetime. He was involved, for example, in the publication of a five-volume abridgment of Plutarch's Lives (1762), a two-volume History of England (1764) followed by a four-volume continuation (1771), two volumes of The Beauties of English Poesy (1767), two volumes of Roman History (1769), two volumes of Grecian History (1774), and eight volumes of An History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1774).

Further Reading

The authoritative biographical study of Goldsmith is Ralph Wardle, Oliver Goldsmith (1957; rev. ed. 1969). Other studies include Ricardo Quintana, Oliver Goldsmith: A Georgian Study (1967), a scholarly though sometimes uneven work, and Robert H. Hopkins, The True Genius of Oliver Goldsmith (1969), an excellent critical commentary on Goldsmith's writings. Useful discussions of Goldsmith's work are in Alan D. McKillop, The Early Masters of English Fiction (1956), and in Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957). Recommended for general historical and social background are J. H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century (1951; rev. ed. 1966); A. R. Humphreys, The Augustan World: Society, Thought, and Letters in Eighteenth Century England (1954; rev. ed. 1963); Ian Watt, The Augustan Age (1968); and R. J. White, The Age of George III (1968).

Additional Sources

Freeman, William, Oliver Goldsmith, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977 c1952.

Gamble, William, Two Irish poets: Goldsmith and Moore, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977.

Ginger, John, The notable man: the life and times of Oliver Goldsmith, London: Hamilton, 1977.

Goldsmith: interviews and recollections, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.

MacLennan, Munro, The secret of Oliver Goldsmith, New York: Vantage Press, 1975.

Sells, A. Lytton (Arthur Lytton), Oliver Goldsmith: his life and works, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974.

Wibberley, Leonard, The good-natured man: a portrait of Oliver Goldsmith, New York: Morrow, 1979.

Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-74). Man of letters. Born in Ireland, Goldsmith attended Trinity College, Dublin, before briefly studying medicine in Edinburgh and Leiden. On settling in London from 1756, he supported himself partly as a physician, partly as a hack-writer, and partly by borrowing from friends. But he gradually pulled himself out of Grub Street. His poem The Traveller (1764) was well received; a novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) has remained a minor classic; The Good-Natured Man, a comedy (1768), had a respectable stage run; The Deserted Village (1770) touched the chord of nostalgia and was much admired; She Stoops to Conquer (1773) was a great success. Goldsmith was a strange man, feckless, naïve, unworldly, generous. He died heavily in debt, and Horace Walpole wrote of him that ‘he had sometimes parts, though never common sense’.

Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-1774) man of letters; born in Pallas, Co. Longford, though the family moved to Lissoy, near Ballymahon, Co. Westmeath. His college career at TCD involved painful humiliations and he was frequently in disciplinary trouble. In 1752 he studied medicine at Edinburgh, visited the Highlands the year after, and then set off on a Continental tour, making his way by flute-playing and singing. Returning destitute to London in 1756, he acted, practised medicine, and corrected proofs. He met Ralph Griffiths, editor of the Monthly Review, and began contributing to his journal. His An Inquiry into Present State of Polite Learning (1759) called for an unaffected style and temper. He became editor of a weekly journal, The Bee, writing most of the eight numbers himself. In 1760-1 the series of Chinese letters later published as The Citizen of the World (1762) appeared in John Newbery's Public Ledger. About this time he met Samuel Johnson, and in 1763 he was a founding member of the Club that met in the Turk's Head in Soho. A History of England (1764) in the form of a letterseries from a nobleman to his son was a popular success. The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society (1764), begun during his European wanderings, shows Goldsmith praising the ‘sympathetic mind’ which tries to see the good in all. In 1764 Johnson, intervening to save Goldsmith from arrest over debt, sold the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). Its mixture of sentiment and irony won Goldsmith many admirers. In 1767 Goldsmith's The Good-Natur'd Man was produced. In this comedy Goldsmith turned back towards the humour of Farquhar, whom he greatly admired. His Roman History (1769) was followed by a History of England (1771), and from around 1767 he laboured at a History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1774). In 1770 The Deserted Village appeared. The poem mixes memories of childhood around Ballymahon with criticism of the enclosures taking place in the English countryside. The second of his plays, She Stoops to Conquer (1773), is a freewheeling comedy consummately realizing the preference for ‘laughing’ over ‘weeping’ comedy outlined in his essay in the London Magazine for the same year. Retaliation (1774) light-heartedly takes revenge on friends, including Edmund Burke, who had teased him. From letters to his friend Bob Bryanston, it is evident that Ireland was close to Goldsmith's heart. His standpoint on the country finds its most direct expression in ‘A Description of the Manner and Customs of the Native Irish’ (1759), and in his ‘History of Carolan, the Last Irish Bard’ (1760), both of which are deficient in accurate information about Gaelic language and culture. Goldsmith's Irishness is ultimately conveyed in the calm but ironic perspective he offers on English life and manners.

Bibliography

A. Lytton Sells, Oliver Goldsmith (1974).

Quotes:

"People seek within a short span of life to satisfy a thousand desires, each of which is insatiable."

"For he that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day, but he, who is in battle slain, can never rise and fight again."

"The doctor found, when she was dead, her last disorder mortal."

"A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation."

"Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, that found me poor at first, and keep me so."

"But in his duty prompt at every call, he watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all."

See more famous quotes by Oliver Goldsmith

For other persons named Goldsmith, see Goldsmith (disambiguation).

Oliver Goldsmith, after Joshua Reynolds, 1769-1770

Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1730 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) (written in memory of his brother), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). (He is also thought to have written the classic children's tale, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, giving the world that familiar phrase.)

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 2.1 The Hermit 2.2 The Citizen of the World 3 Memorials concerning Oliver Goldsmith 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

Biography

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 29 November, 1731, or perhaps in 1730. Other sources have indicated 10 November, on any year from 1727 to 1731. 10 November 1730 is now the most commonly accepted birth date.

Neither is the location of his birthplace certain. 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 in the diocese of Elphin, County Roscommon where his grandfather Oliver Jones was a clergyman and master of the Elphin diocesan school. When he was two years old, Goldsmith's 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. Neglecting his studies in theology and law, he fell to the bottom of his class. His tutor was Theaker Wilder. He was 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, playing 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 and the University of Leiden, and set out on a walking tour of Flanders, France, Switzerland and Northern Italy, living by his wits (busking with his flute).

A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds - 1781. The painting shows the friends of Reynolds - many of whom were members of "The Club" - use cursor to identify.

He settled in London in 1756, where he briefly held various jobs, including apothecary's assistant and usher of a school. Perennially in debt and addicted to gambling, Goldsmith produced a massive output as a hack writer 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". 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.

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.

His premature death in 1774 may have been partly due to his own misdiagnosis of his kidney infection. Goldsmith was buried in Temple Church. The inscription reads; "HERE LIES/OLIVER GOLDSMITH". There is a monument to him in the center of Ballymahon, also in Westminster Abbey with an epitaph written by Samuel Johnson.^[1]

Works

Oliver Goldsmith

See The Vicar of Wakefield, The Good-Natur'd Man, and She Stoops to Conquer.

Goldsmith wrote the pastoral poem The Deserted Village in memory of his brother. He is also thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes.

The Hermit

Goldsmith wrote this romantic ballad of precisely 160 lines 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 boy's clothes and, not recognizing 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 demeanor 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.

The Citizen of the World

In 1760, Goldsmith began to publish a series of letters in the Public Ledger under the title The Citizen of the World. Purportedly written by a Chinese traveler in England named Lien Chi, they used this fictional outsider's perspective to comment ironically and at times moralistically on British society and manners.

The ironic poem, An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog was published in 1766.

Memorials concerning Oliver Goldsmith

There is a school named after him in London called the Oliver Goldsmith Primary School.

In the play "Marx In Soho" by Howard Zinn, Marx makes a reference to The Deserted Village.^[2]

A statue of him stands at the Front Arch of Trinity College, Dublin.

His name has been given to a new lecture theater and student accommodation on the Trinity College campus, "Goldsmith Hall".

Somerset Maugham used the last line from An Elegy On The Death Of A Mad Dog in his novel The Painted Veil (1925). The character Walter Fane's last words are The dog it was that died.

Auburn, Alabama and Auburn University were named for the first line in Goldsmith's poem: "Sweet Auburn, loveliest village on the plain." Auburn is still referred to as the 'loveliest village on the plains.'

There is a statue in Ballymahon County Longford.

Notes

1. ^ "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.
2. ^ Marx in Soho, Howard Zinn 1999, South End Press

References

• The Vicar of Wakefield, ISBN 0-19-283940-3
• She Stoops to Conquer, ISBN 0-486-26867-5
• Life of Oliver Goldsmith, by Washington Irving, ISBN 1-58963-236-2
• The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith by Austin Dobson (Editor), ISBN 1-58827-277-X
• Oliver Goldsmith (Everyman's Poetry Series) edited by Gordon Campbell, ISBN 0-460-87827-1
• George Rousseau (1974), Goldsmith: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974). ISBN 0710077203
• Oliver Goldsmith of Elphin, by J. A. Connellan, Published for the Goldsmith Society (1935)
• Life of Goldsmith, by James Prior, two volumes (London: John Murray, 1837) at Google Books.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Oliver Goldsmith

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Oliver Goldsmith

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Author:Oliver Goldsmith

• Works by Oliver Goldsmith at Project Gutenberg
• Essays by Oliver Goldsmith at Quotidiana.org
• The Deserted Village
• Oliver Goldsmith: A Biography by Washington Irving from Project Gutenberg
• Goldsmith (English Men of Letters series) by William Black from Project Gutenberg
• An Essay on the Theatre; or, A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy
• Goldsmith Hall - student accommodation and lecture theatre, Trinity College, Dublin.
• Information on Goldsmith
• Oliver Goldsmith Resource
• Works by Oliver Goldsmith in e-book version
• The Goldsmith International Literary FestivalInfo on the Festival held annually in Goldsmith's Home County
• Poems and essays, Oliver Goldsmith, 1839, (William Smith, London)
• Oliver Goldsmith at Find a Grave

Persondata
NAME	Goldsmith, Oliver
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician
DATE OF BIRTH	10 November 1730 or 1728
PLACE OF BIRTH	townland of Pallas, near Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland or Smith Hill House in the diocese of Elphin, County Roscommon
DATE OF DEATH	4 April 1774
PLACE OF DEATH

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