Oliver Goldsmith Books
The Citizen of the World (1762) , The Traveller (1764) , The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) , The Good-natur'd Man (1768) , The Deserted Village (1770) , She Stoops to Conquer (1773) , The Good-natur'd Man , The Life of Richard Nash , The Rising Village , Retaliation
Oliver Goldsmith Links
Theatre History - OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Site http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/goldsmith001.html
AFTER a course at Trinity College, Dublin, made miserable by his personal ungainliness and bad manners, Oliver Goldsmith was on the point of emigrating to America. If he had not missed his ship, high school students might not find in their course of prescribed reading such literary gems as The Deserted Village or The Vicar of Wakefield, nor play lovers enjoy the absurdities of his dramatic masterpiece, She Stoops to Conquer.
Our Civilisation - Dr Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Site http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/goldsmth/about.htm
Dr. Oliver Goldsmith was a very great man. This his contemporaries agreed on, yet none of them knew quite why. He baffled Dr. Johnson with his absurdities; Horace Walpole dismissed him as "an inspired idiot"; David Garrick immortalized him in the biting lines: Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll. And even Sir Joshua Reynolds, who saw further and deeper into Goldsmith's character than anyone else, realised that no man could get such a reputation for absurdity without there being reason for it. All agreed that the most absurd thing about Goldsmith, more absurd even than his asinine and inappropriate remarks, was his transparent envy. He could not bear praise of any man. The adulation rendered to Samuel Johnson gave him acute pain. Sometimes he tried to discharge his envy by making a joke of it and a mock of himself, as when he leaped onto a chair to show that he could deliver a better speech than Edmund Burke and dried up after two sentences. Yet the envy was there; as unmistakable as it was painful. And naturally his friends rubbed salt and acid on the raw aching heart. Solace he found for his strange nature in jokes, in absurdity, and in writing. He was driven by the deep urges of his personality as much as Dr. Johnson or James Boswell, but their urges were powerful, sensual, religious, locked in a massive, virile framework of passion. Oliver Goldsmith was blown about like a butterfly: his character seemed to lack core or mass. He longed for applause, love, affection, to be known to be good, to be wholesome, to be wanted. And the effect became ludicrous. The urgency of his desires, the immediacy of his responses, the unawareness of their excess, made him foolish; his features and his manner rendered him ludicrous. People laughed at him but wanted to be with him, so what began as an absurdity became a practise in folly. Notoriety and laughter, even against himself, were better than isolation and neglect.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Site http://www.irishwriters-online.com/olivergoldsmith.html
Oliver Goldsmith was born on November 10th, 1730. His birthplace is disputed but it is most probably Pallasmore, Co. Longford. At the age of eight he had a severe attack of smallpox which disfigured him for life. He received a B.A. degree in February 1749 from Trinity College Dublin, before he left Ireland in 1752 to study medicine in Edinburgh. He subsequently wandered through Europe, supporting himself by begging and by playing the flute, before settling in London. His most famous works are his novel, The Vicar of Wakefield (Salisbury, B. Collins for F. Newbery, 2 volumes, 1766); his long poem, The Deserted Village (London, W. Griffin, 26 May, 1770, with four more editions in the same year); and his play, She Stoops to Conquer, a Comedy (produced at Covent Garden, 15 March, 1773). His voluminous lesser-known works include An Enquiry into the present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759); Retaliation (Essays, London, G. Kearsley, 1774. 2nd edition, corrected, 1766); Memoirs of M. de Voltaire (The Lady’s Magazine, 1761); The History of England (4 volumes, 1771); The Citizen of the World; or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, residing in London, to his Friend in the East (appeared in The Public Ledger as Chinese Letters from 24 January, 1760, to 14 August, 1761.Published in two volumes, May, 1762); Plutarch’s Lives, abridged from the Greek. By Goldsmith and Joseph Collyer (7 vols. 1762); The Art of Poetry (2 vols. 1762); The Traveller; or, a Prospect of Society (published 19 December, 1764, dated 1765); An History of the Earth and Animated Nature (Dublin, J. Williams, 1782-1774 8 volumes); An History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son (2 volumes, 1764); A Concise History of Philosophy and Philosophers. Translated by Goldsmith from the French of Formey (1766); A Short English Grammar (1766); Poems for Young Ladies. Collected, with Preface (1767); Beauties of English Poesy (2 volumes, 1767); The Good Natur'd Man, a Comedy (produced at Covent Garden, 29 January,1768, 5th edn. 1768); A Survey of Experimental Philosophy (published posthumously, 2 volumes, 1776); and The Haunch of Venison (published posthumously 1776). He was extravagant in taste and recklessly generous, to the extent that he died leaving debts of £2000. He never married, but had a close relationship with Mary Horneck, with whom he fell in love in 1769. He died after a short illness in the spring of 1774, and is buried in the churchyard of the Church of Saint Mary, also known as The Temple, in London. His epitaph, by Johnson, includes the famous line: Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit (He touched nothing that he did not adorn).
Oliver Goldsmith - NNDB
Site http://www.nndb.com/people/646/000095361/
English poet, playwright, novelist and man of letters, came of a Protestant and Saxon family which had long been settled in Ireland. He is usually said to have been born at Pallas or Pallasmore, Co. Longford; but recent investigators have contended, with much show of probability, that his true birthplace was Smith-Hill House, Elphin, Roscommon, the residence of his mother's father, the Rev. Oliver Jones. His father, Charles Goldsmith, lived at Pallas, supporting with difficulty his wife and children on what he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer.
Oliver Goldsmith - Ask about Ireland
Site http://www.askaboutireland.ie/show_narrative_page.do?page_id=633
Oliver Goldsmith was born in 1728, possibly at Smith-Hill House, Elphin, County Roscommon. Soon after Oliver was born his father was appointed curate in Kilkenny West, County Longford and so his family left Roscommon and moved to the neighbouring county. They settled in a pleasant house with a farm of about seventy acres, located just outside the village of Lissoy, which Goldsmith later immortalised as "Auburn" in his famous poem The Deserted Village.
Oliver Goldsmith - Dublin Tourism
Site http://www.dublintourist.com/literary_dublin/oliver_goldsmith.shtml
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.
Oliver Goldsmith - The Traveler
Site http://www.olivergoldsmith.org.uk
Goldsmith's own travelling was not very successful! Born into a large, and not terribly affluent, family he first decided to emigrate to America but he missed the boat. A career in law beckoned and an uncle arranged for him to go to London to study there; it may have been the making of him but he only got as far as Dublin and managed to lose the course fees on the gambling tables. With another loan/gift in his pocket, studying medicine at Edinburgh was his next project but he didn't feel that this was sufficient to guarantee him a lucrative career, so he decided to go to Leyden to finish his studies there. He stayed for a year before the wonderlust gripped him again and he became nothing more than a tramp, and walking through France, Switzerland and Italy, he was reduced to 'singing for his supper' by playing his flute to the locals in exchange for a meal and somewhere to lay his head for the night.
Oliver Goldsmith - DubLinks
Site http://www.dublinks.com/index.cfm/loc/6-2/pt/0/spid/86641F03-71CA-4FD5-B2042832CE0A0246.htm
The writer of the play 'She Stoops to Conquer' was born in Co Longford but spent his student years at Trinity College, Dublin. He led a distinguished but not always a responsible life as a dramatist, novelist, poet and essayist in London. His other most famous works include the novel The Vicar of Wakefield and the poem The Deserted Village. John Henry Foley was the sculptor of his statue which today stands outside Trinity College
Oliver Goldsmith - Encyclopedia Britannica
Site http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9037281
English essayist, poet, novelist, dramatist, and eccentric, made famous by such works as the series of essays The Citizen of the World, or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher (1762), the poem The Deserted Village (1770), the novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and the play She Stoops to Conquer (1773).
"We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence."
W. B. Yeats, speech in the Irish Senate, June 11, 1925