Oliver Goldsmith

In the winter of 1756, a penniless, tired young man arrived in Dover, England by boat. Having just spent several years traveling continental Europe alone, he now urgently needed to find a source of income. The question was how to earn it: as a writer? A teacher? Using his unrecognized Dutch medical degree? The young man, Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), eventually settled on the first of these options. While never financially secure and always writing for money, Goldsmith produced works of history, poetry, essays, plays, and a novel that helped define an era.

Oliver Goldsmith: Biography

Oliver Goldsmith was born on November 10th, 1728 in Ireland and grew up in rural County Westmeath. His father was a reverend in the Anglican Church, and his family was respectable but poor. As a boy, he showed little promise as a student. He also suffered from smallpox, which disfigured his face.

In 1745 he went off to Trinity College in Dublin as a sizar, meaning that he worked as a kind of servant for wealthier students to earn his keep. After graduating in 1749, he went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine but didn’t complete his course of studies.

Instead, Goldsmith embarked on a two-year tour of continental Europe, traveling around Holland, France, Italy, and Switzerland. He busked with his flute, begged, and slept rough to survive, returning penniless to England in 1756 with an M.D. of dubious validity.¹

Oliver Goldsmith went to London, where he unsuccessfully tried to practice medicine and performed various odd jobs before becoming a writer for hire. This was a poorly paid and disreputable position at the time, and Goldsmith had to write incessantly to earn enough money to survive. In these years, Goldsmith was one step away from starvation or debtor’s prison.

Oliver Goldsmith wrote copious reviews, histories, translations, biographies, and essays. He was quickly distinguished by the quality of his writing, particularly his first book, which relied heavily on his own experience studying and traveling, An Enquiry into the Current State of Polite Learning (1759). His various histories, translations, and essays, especially his collection of "letters" from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant to London, The Citizen of the World (1762), continued to build his reputation, but it was his poem "The Traveler, or a Prospect of Society" (1764) that skyrocketed Goldsmith to literary fame.

After 1764, Oliver Goldsmith was a genuine literary celebrity, meeting with The Club organized around Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), becoming close friends with the famous painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the star actor David Garrick (1717-1779), and generally rubbing shoulders with the wealthy and powerful. At the end of the year, he had secured a kind of literary patronage from Robert Nugent, a wealthy and influential fellow Irishman.

Despite his established reputation, Oliver Goldsmith still relied on publishing to earn money. He developed a taste for luxurious clothes and housing, and his extravagant spending meant he was constantly in debt. He continued successfully publishing, including his first novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, in 1766. In 1768, he produced his first piece for the theater, The Good-Natured Man. He continued producing literature of excellent quality at remarkable speed, publishing his best-known poem, "The Deserted Village", in 1770, and a second successful theatrical work, She Stoops to Conquer, in 1773, the year before his death.³

Overworked and exhausted, Oliver Goldsmith contracted a fever in March of 1774. His symptoms continued to worsen, and he generally ignored the advice of his physicians, which conflicted with his own self-diagnosis. By the end of the month, he was entirely bed-ridden, and on April 4th, 1774, he suffered a series of seizures before dying.⁴

Oliver Goldsmith's Books

As someone who depended entirely on publications for his income, Oliver Goldsmith produced reams of reviews, essays, letters, histories, poems, and stories. These were all popular in their time, but his breakthrough An Enquiry into the Current State of Polite Learning, his collection of letters from a new immigrant's perspective, The Citizen of the World, and his only novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, are still widely read and studied.

An Enquiry into the Current State of Polite Learning (1759)

This collection of fourteen essays deals with topics such as the decline of learning from ancient times, the negative effects of contemporary book reviews and literary criticism, and differing methods of education across Europe. While parts of it contain what we would today think of as plagiarism, much of it draws heavily on Goldsmith’s own experience at Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Edinburgh, and his travels through Europe, particularly France and Italy. The book was not without controversy but raised a great deal of interest in Goldsmith as an up-and-comer on the London literary scene.

The Citizen of the World (1762)

This book is a compilation of "The China Letters", 119 essays that Oliver Goldsmith had earlier published individually in newspapers. They are written from the perspective of a newly arrived immigrant from China, Lien Chi Altangi. Thoughtful, philosophical, and well-educated but with no preconceptions or prejudices of what he will find in London, his observations offer a funny but unsparing criticism of the brutality, hypocrisy, and artificiality of 18th-century English culture. Popular characters he encounters include the generous but secretive Man in Black and the pretentious ‘Beau’ Tibbs.

The Vicar of Wakefield (1762)

This novel tells the story of Charles Primrose, a vicar with a large family in Yorkshire.

Fig. 3 - A depiction of the Primrose family in an 1817 frontispiece.

After a financial catastrophe, he loses all of his wealth and property and is forced to move to a new post in the countryside. Despite his increasing poverty and bad luck, Charles (like Pangloss from Candide) remains optimistic. There is a villainous local squire named Thornhill in this new parish. Thornhill has Charles imprisoned, seduces one of his daughters, and tricks her into a fake marriage. Thornhill reveals that he has done this 6-8 times already, forcing the victims into prostitution afterward.

George, Charles' son, goes to England to become a writer. In desperation, he nearly joins the military before being taken in by a troupe of actors. He comes home on an acting tour, and Thornhill contracts him as a soldier to be sent to the West Indies so that he can defile George’s girlfriend.

The novel has strong autobiographical components, with many of the events being thinly disguised incidents from Oliver Goldsmith’s own life. While it is a comic novel, critics disagree about whether it is meant to be satirical or sentimental. The novel also has elements of social criticism, indirectly condemning social inequality and the British colonization of Ireland.

Oliver Goldsmith's Plays

Oliver Goldsmith only just began to write for the theater towards the end of his life. The two plays that he wrote proved enormously popular in their own day and are still read and produced today.

The Good-Natured Man (1768)

This comedy's protagonist is a kind but credulous man named Honeywood. He is in love with a wealthy young woman, Miss Richland, and she with him, but he is too afraid to propose to her.

One evening two bailiffs, sent by his uncle to try to teach him a lesson, arrive at his house to imprison him. Worried about what everyone will think, he tries to cover up the situation by passing them off as guests. The two bailiffs are dressed in fine clothes and join in a discussion about French influence on English taste, which Honeywood has to try to interpret for his other guests.

After he is arrested, he is bailed out by Miss Richland. Unaware who paid the bail, he assumes it is his rich and influential friend, Lofty. Feeling indebted to Lofty, he tries to help him marry Miss Richland, who he is interested in for her money and looks alone.

Miss Richland’s guardian, meanwhile, a distant relative named Mrs. Croaker, has every intention of marrying her son, Leontine, to Miss Richland. Her concerns are purely with Miss Richmond’s fortune, and they have no interest in each other. Ultimately, Honeywood learns who bailed him out and marries Miss Richland.

She Stoops to Conquer (1773)

This comedic play is A Story of misunderstanding and mistaken identity. A suitor, Marlow, is tricked into believing that the house of his potential lover, Kate Hardcastle, is an inn. He proceeds to treat Kate’s father and mother like innkeepers, rudely ordering food, demanding to see rooms, and telling his servants to drink as much as they can. Marlow is painfully shy around upper-class women, but something of a rake with lower-class ones. After an extremely awkward interview with Kate, she manages to convince him that she’s a barmaid by changing her outfit and voice. His attitude towards her changes entirely, and he tries to forcibly kiss her and carry her off.

In a subplot, Kate’s cousin, Constance, is in love with a man named Hastings. Kate’s mother wants Constance to marry her son from another marriage, Tony, in order to keep her wealth in the family. After an unsuccessful attempt to elope, Tony officially refuses to marry Constance so she and Hastings can be together.

By stooping to the level first of a barmaid and then of a poor relative, Kate manages to elicit professions of love and tenderness from the formerly cold Marlow. In the end, all of the deception is revealed, but everyone forgives each other. Hastings is to marry Constance and Marlow is to marry Kate.

Oliver Goldsmith's Writing Style

Oliver Goldsmith wrote towards the end of the age of Neoclassical or Augustan literature, which was preoccupied with its relation to the classical Greek and Roman literary heritage as well as with the formal rules that should govern writing, down to how vowels and syllables should be arranged.

Oliver Goldsmith managed to write within the confines of this style while not sounding pompous or artificial, maintaining a grace and simplicity that belies its difficulty and craftsmanship. Even more remarkable was the volume and pace at which Goldsmith was able to produce this quality of writing. In the words of his close friend and contemporary, Samuel Johnson, he “touched every kind of writing, and touched none that he did not adorn.”³

Oliver Goldsmith: Quotes

Oliver Goldsmith produced many memorable turns of phrase in poetry, prose, and conversation.

In the opening stanza of "The Traveler," the poem that made him a literary celebrity, Goldsmith catalogues the difficulties of traveling through remote regions of Europe before remarking that: