Oliver Goldsmith

The son of an Irish protestant clergyman, he graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1749. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and Leiden, but he was unsuccessful as a Doctor. In 1756 he settled in London, where he was modestly successful as a contributor to periodicals and as the author of "Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe" (1759). But it was not until "The Citizen of the World" (1762), a series of unusual and satirical essays, that he was recognised as an gifted man of letters. His fame grew with "The Traveler"(1764), a philosophic poem, and the nostalgic pastoral "The Deserted Village" (1770). However, his literary reputation rests on his two comedies, "The Good-natur’d Man" (1768) and "She Stoops to Conquer" (1773), and his only novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766). His comedies inserted a much-needed sense of realism into the uninteresting, sentimental plays of the period. They are lively, witty, and imbued with an appealing humanity. "The Vicar of Wakefield" is the warm, humorous, melodramatic story of a country cleric and his family. Although he earned a great deal of money in his lifetime, Goldsmith’s extravagance kept him poor. Boswell depicted him as a ridiculous, blundering, but also a tenderhearted and generous creature. He had the friendship of many of the literary and artistic great of his day, the most notable being that of Samuel Johnson.