life work of oliver goldsmith

8/11/2019 Life Work of Oliver Goldsmith

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B I O G R A P H Y

A C I T Y N I G H T - P I E C E

Life and WorkOf

OLIVER GOLDSMITH


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Milestones and times

Chronology of Life:Born: Ireland Nov.1730College Dublin 1745-50Law study: 1752

Medical study: 1752-54Europe tour: 1755 Writer: 1757Johnsons club: 1764 Plays,poems:1762-1774Died in April 1774[at age 44]

Happenings: EVENTS:Covent Garden operahouse opens-1732Pope, Johnson, Boswell-

1732-1765George III accession -1760Capt. Cook voyage: 1768

American war: 1775 Americanindependence:1776

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Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1730 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet.He is best known for his novel The

Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoralpoem The Deserted Village (1770), andhis plays The Good-Natured Man (1768) and She Stoops toConquer (1771).She Stoops to Conquer was firstperformed in 1773.He also wrote An History of the Earthand Animated Nature .He is thought to have writtenthe classic children's tale The Historyof Little Goody Two-Shoes , the sourceof the phrase "goody two-shoes".

He was an original member of Dr.Johnsons Literary Club.


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o The family of Olivers father, a pastor, consisted of five

sons and three daughters. Henry, the eldest, was the good

man's pride and hope, and he tasked his slender means to

the utmost in educating him for a learned and

distinguished career.

o Oliver was the second son, and seven years younger

than Henry, who was the guide and protector of his

childhood, and to whom he was most tenderly attached

throughout life.

o The expense for Olivers education was borne mostly by

his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarine.


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o Young Oliver Goldsmith had a thoughtless

generosity extremely captivating to young hearts;

his temper was quick and sensitive, and easily

offended; but his anger was momentary, and it

was impossible for him to harbor resentment.

o He was the leader of all boyish sports and athletic

amusements, especially ball-playing, and he was

foremost in all mischievous pranks. He became a

poet-errant.


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o Oliver Goldsmith had a natural indolence and a love of

convivial pleasures. "I was a lover of mirth, good humor,

and even sometimes of fun," said he, "from my childhood.

o He was notably homely, with a protruding mouth, short

chin, and deep scars from the smallpox that afflicted him at

age seven.

o A graduate but with no distinction, he had a long way to go

before he earned his fame, credit and popularity.

o His graduate degree though gained him a respectable

position in the society; he failed to find a suitable profession

in Church or law.6


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Now there can be no question that Goldsmith,

conscious of his pitted face, his brogue, and hisungainly figure, was exceedingly nervous and

sensitive in society, and was anxious, as such people

mostly are, to cover his shyness by an appearance of

ease, if not even of swagger; and there can be as

little question that he occasionally did and said veryawkward and blundering things.


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o 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.

o In 1747, along with four other undergraduates, he was

expelled for a riot in which they attempted to storm the

Marshalsea Prison. He lost his father in the same year.

o 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.

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o Oliver Goldsmith was a paradoxical man: on the one

hand, a perennial outcast who suffered misfortune

throughout most of his life, on the other a sublime writer

whose works would withstand the test of time.

o A stammering, clumsy prankster, Goldsmith often willingly

humiliated himself in public, and refused to change his

rural manners or Irish brogue.

o His openness, imagination, self-mockery and scorn for

affectation were noteworthy in the European intellectual

sphere at his time.

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o 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.

o He set out on a walking tour of Flanders, France,

Switzerland and Northern Italy, living by his wits (buskingwith his flute).

o His education seemed to have given him mainly a taste

for fine clothes, playing cards, singing Irish airs andplaying the flute.

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o Only when Goldsmith entered the literary world in 1757 did

his life finally take a positive turn.

o He found low quality, poorly paid work, editing for the

Monthly Review and proofreading for a printer. He penned a

successful translation and a series of articles between 1758

and 1759.

o Goldsmith quickly gained recognition, employment, and

friendship with some of the foremost literary minds of his

day.

o He produced, with equal skill, renowned novels, poetry,

dramas, criticism, essays, biographies and histories.11


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o In 1759, he came with, Enquiry into the Present

State of Polite Learning in Europe.

o In 1760, he started publishing The Citizen of the

World in the Public Ledger, a magazine.

o The letters provided a fictional perspective andmoralistically and ironically commented on the

British society and manners. These essays were

initially claimed to be written by a Chinese

philosopher Lien Chi


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Goldsmith and Johnson

In 1765, the Traveller was published. Though part of

it was written in Switzerland, it was completed

slowly, polished and pruned. Dr. Johnsonencouraged him. Its publication changed the image

of Oliver Goldsmith from an essayist to that of a poet

of the age. Very soon after this, The Vicar of the

Wakefield appeared and his reputation established.

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"A City Night-Piece."

The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper rises and

sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in

slumber, the laborious and the happy are at rest, and

nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and despair.

The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl, the

robber walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts hisguilty arm against his own sacred person.

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Let me no longer waste the night over the

page of antiquity or the sallies ofcontemporary genius, but pursue the solitary

walk, where Vanity, ever changing, but a few

hours past walked before me, where she kept

up the pageant, and now, like a forward child,

seems hushed with her own importunities.

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What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp

feebly emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of

the chiming clock, or the distant watch-dog. All the

bustle of human pride is forgotten; an hour like this

may well display the emptiness of human vanity.There will come a time when this temporary solitude

may be made continual, and the city itself, like its

inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room.

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What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in

existence! had their victories as great, joy as justand as "Unbounded, and, with short-sighted

presumption, promised themselves immortality!

Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some; the

sorrowful traveler wanders over the lawful ruins of

others; and, as he beholds, he learns wisdom, andfeels the transience of every sublunary possession.

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"Here," he cries, "stood their

citadel, now grown over with,weeds; there, their senate

house, but now the haunt of

every noxious, reptile; temples

and theatres stood here, now

only an undistinguished heap ofruin.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goldsmith.jpg


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They are fallen: for luxury and avarice first made them feeble.

The rewards of the state were conferred on amusing and not

on useful members of society.Their riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at

first repulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance,

and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished

destruction .

How few appear in those streets which, but some few hours

ago, were crowded! and those who appear now no longer

wear their daily mask, nor attempt to hide their lewdness or

their misery. 21


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But who are those who make the streets their couch,

and find a short repose from wretchedness at the

doors of the opulent?

These are strangers, wanderers, and orphans,

whose circumstances are too humble to expectredress, and whose distresses are too great even for

pity. Their wretchedness rather excites horror than

pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and

others emaciated with disease:

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the world has disclaimed them; society turns its back

upon their distress, and has given them up to

nakedness, hunger. These poor shivering females

have once seen happier days. They have been

prostituted to the gay, luxurious villain, and are nowturned out to meet the severity of Winter. Perhaps,

now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to

wretches whose hearts are insensible, to debauchees

who may curse but will not relieve them.

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Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the

sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve! Poor

houseless creatures! the world will give you

reproaches, but will not give you relief. Misfortunes of

the great, the imaginary uneasinesses of the rich, areaggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held

up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow.

The poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every

subordinate species of tyranny;

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and every law, which gives others security, becomes an

enemy to them. Why was this heart of mine formed with so

much sensibility! Or why was not my fortune adapted to its

impulse! Tenderness, without a capacity of relieving, only

makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object

which sues for assistance. Adieu.

-- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74).

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Inspiration for She Stoops to Conquer

At age 17, Goldsmith was traveling in the Irish

countryside, and when night came asked a passerby

to recommend an inn. The passerby, who happened

to be the towns joker, directed Goldsmith to thehome of a squire. The squire played along with the

prank, and only when Goldsmith left special

instructions for his breakfast did his host reveal that

the house was not an inn, but a private home.


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With the production of She Stoops to Conquer in

1773, Oliver Goldsmith found himself at the peak of

his fame yet deeply depressed and in debt. By

1774, he was dead.

Sadly, his own generation did not fully recognize

Goldsmiths talents, and it was not until the mid -

twentieth century that he began to receive the full

scholarly and biographical analysis that he

deserves.


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The Club or The Literary Club

Members of the Literary Club.6/2/2013

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She Stoops to Conquer playwright Oliver Goldsmith was a

member of the Literary Club, formed by Dr. Samuel Johnson

in 1763. Among other members were James Boswell,

Johnsons biographer; Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter;

Adam Smith, the economist; Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the

playwright; David Garrick, the actor; and Edmund Burke, the

politician. The world that Goldsmith and his contemporaries

wrote about was a world with great mixing of socioeconomic

classes. The cutting edge of artistic innovation moved away

from the Court where it had been during the Restoration

and toward the public.

life work of oliver goldsmith

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