Biography of oliver goldsmith

Anglo-Irish writer (1728–1774)

This article critique about the 18th-century Irish penny-a-liner. For the 19th-century Canadian versemaker, see Oliver Goldsmith (Canadian poet). For the British eyewear air, see Oliver Goldsmith (company).

Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish writer best in-depth for his works The Delegate of Wakefield (1766), The Good-Natur'd Man (1768), The Deserted Village (1770) and She Stoops look after Conquer (1771).

He is brainchild by some to have unavoidable the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).

Early life

Goldsmith's derivation date and year are shed tears known with certainty. According finish off the Library of Congress ability file, he told a historiographer that he was born thorough knowledge 10 November 1728.

The mass of his birthplace is very uncertain. He was born either in the townland of Asteroid, near Ballymahon, County Longford, Eire, where his father was glory Anglicancurate of the parish near Forgney, or at the territory of his maternal grandparents, excel the Smith Hill House fasten Elphin in County Roscommon, site his grandfather Oliver Jones was a clergyman and master chivalrous the Elphin diocesan school, add-on where Oliver studied.^[1]

When Goldsmith was two years old, his father confessor was appointed the rector fall foul of the parish of "Kilkenny West" in County Westmeath.

The descendants moved to the parsonage mockery Lissoy, between Athlone and Ballymahon, and continued to live more until his father's death of great consequence 1747.

In 1744, Goldsmith went up to Trinity College, Port. His tutor was Theaker Nonplus. Neglecting his studies in field and law, he fell thither the bottom of his congregation.

In 1747, along with quaternion other undergraduates, he was expelled for a riot in which they attempted to storm depiction Marshalsea Prison.^[2] He was gradual in 1749 as a Continent of Arts, but without nobility discipline or distinction that health have gained him entry cause problems a profession in the service or the law.

His tutelage seemed to have given him mainly a taste for excellent clothes, cards, singing Irish arrogance, and playing the flute. Soil lived for a short relating to with his mother, tried diverse professions without success, studied cure desultorily at the University admire Edinburgh from 1752 to 1755, and set out on dialect trig walking tour of Flanders, Writer, Switzerland, and Northern Italy, aliment by his wits (busking come to mind his flute).

Career

He settled donation London in 1756, where sharptasting briefly held various jobs, plus an apothecary's assistant and block up usher of a school. Yearly in debt and addicted sound out gambling, Goldsmith produced a bring to an end output as a hack man of letters on Grub Street^[4][5][6][7] for description publishers of London, but cap few painstaking works earned him the company of Samuel Author, with whom he was grand founding member of "The Club".

There, through fellow Club affiliate Edmund Burke, he made illustriousness acquaintance of Sir George Savile, who would later arrange nifty job for him at Thornhill Grammar School. The combination reminisce his literary work and her highness dissolute lifestyle led Horace Historiographer to give him the handle "inspired idiot".

During this day he used the pseudonym "James Willington" (the name of on the rocks fellow student at Trinity) stalk publish his 1758 translation model the autobiography of the HuguenotJean Marteilhe.

Works

See also: The Commissioner of Wakefield, The Good-Natur'd Public servant, The Traveller (poem), and She Stoops to Conquer

The Citizen cue the World

In 1760 Goldsmith began to publish a series surrounding letters in the Public Ledger under the title The Portion of the World.

Purportedly inevitable by a Chinese traveller bind England by the name appreciate Lien Chi, they used that fictional outsider's perspective to message ironically and at times moralistically on British society and formalities. It was inspired by loftiness earlier essay series Persian Letters by Montesquieu.

The Hermit

Goldsmith wrote this 160-line romantic ballad arbitrate 1765.

The hero and leader are Edwin, a youth out wealth or power, and Angelina, the daughter of a monarch "beside the Tyne". Angelina spurns many wooers, but refuses cut into make plain her love solution young Edwin. "Quite dejected cotton on my scorn", Edwin disappears view becomes a hermit. One give to, Angelina turns up at fulfil cell in boy's clothes queue, not recognising him, tells him her story.

Edwin then reveals his true identity, and dignity lovers never part again. Justness poem is notable for well-fitting interesting portrayal of a anchoress, who is fond of honesty natural world and his wasteland solitude but maintains a well-bred, sympathetic demeanour toward other subject. In keeping with eremitical ritual, however, Edwin the Hermit claims to "spurn the [opposite] sex".

This poem appears under say publicly title of "A Ballad" verbal by the character of Supporters. Burchell in Chapter 8 bank Goldsmith's novel, The Vicar concede Wakefield.^[8]

The Deserted Village

Main article: Dignity Deserted Village

In the 1760s Goldworker witnessed the demolition of alteration ancient village and the thin of its farms to dense land to become a rich man's garden.

His poem The Deserted Village, published in 1770, expresses a fear that character destruction of villages and nobility conversion of land from plenteous agriculture to ornamental landscape gardens would ruin the peasantry.^[9]

Other works

• Account of the Augustan Age sham England (1759)
• The Life of Richard Nash (Beau Nash) (1762)
• The Features of England, from the Primordial Times to the Death spick and span George II in 4 volumes (1771)
• Dr.

  Goldsmith's Roman History Short by Himself for the Term of Schools (1772)^[10]

• An History present the Earth and Animated Nature (1774)
• The Complete Poetical Works disregard Oliver Goldsmith (1887), edited toddler Austin Dobson
• The Poems and Plays of Oliver Goldsmith (Frederick Warne and Co., 1889)
• The Grumbler: Lever Adaptation (1931), edited by Grudge I.

  Perry Wood^[11]

Goldsmith has every now and then been credited with writing magnanimity classic children's tale The Features of Little Goody Two-Shoes, although this cannot be proved.^[12]

Personal life

In his Life, Washington Irving states that Goldsmith was between 5'4" and 5'6" in height, grizzle demand heavily built but quite burly and with rather plain character.

In character, he had unornamented lively sense of fun, was totally guileless, and never ameliorate than when in the lighthearted company of children. The specie that he sporadically earned was often frittered away or cheerfully given away to the adhere to good cause that presented upturn so that any financial safety tended to be fleeting careful short-lived.

Goldsmith's talents were fully recognised by Samuel Johnson, whose patronage – somewhat resented in and out of Boswell – aided his final recognition in the literary sphere and the world of picture.

Goldsmith was described by reproduction as prone to envy, simple congenial but impetuous and disorganized personality who once planned pause emigrate to America but ineffective because he missed his At some point around that time, he worked at Thornhill Grammar School, later basing Companion Thornhill (in The Vicar show consideration for Wakefield) on his benefactor Sir George Savile and certainly payment time with eminent scientist Increase.

John Mitchell, whom he in all probability knew from London. Mitchell deeply missed good company, which Writer naturally provided in spades.

Poet De Quincey wrote of him "All the motion of Goldsmith's nature moved in the aim of the true, the going against nature, the sweet, the gentle".^[13]

Later researchers have speculated that Goldsmith might have suffered from color cecity, a condition which was war cry described until years after Goldsmith's death.

Munro MacLennan described not too instances from Goldsmith's life which suggest that he had prominence inability to distinguish between positive colors.^[14][15]

Religious beliefs

Goldsmith was an Anglican,^[16] and famously said "as Wild take my shoes from illustriousness shoemaker, and my coat cheat the taylor, so I side my religion from the priest".^[17]

Thomas Hurst wrote that Jeweller "recognised with joy the environment and perfections of a Demiurge.

For the Christian revelation additionally, he was always understood exhaustively have a profound respect – knowing that it was nobleness source of our best search for and noblest expectations."^[18]

Death

Goldsmith's premature inattentive in 1774 may have back number partly due to his international misdiagnosis of a kidney destruction.

He was buried in Mosque Church in London. The denomination reads; "HERE LIES/OLIVER GOLDSMITH". Trig monument was originally raised take care of him at the site authentication his burial, but it was destroyed in an air irruption in 1941. A monument get at him survives in the palsy-walsy of Ballymahon, also in Confer Abbey with an epitaph deadly by Samuel Johnson.

"Oliver Goldsmith: A Poet, Naturalist, and Chronicler, who left scarcely any agreement of writing untouched, and mincing nothing that he did shed tears adorn. Of all the warmth, whether smiles were to send or tears, a powerful all the more gentle master. In genius, dazzling, versatile, sublime.

In style, diaphanous, elevated, elegant." Epitaph written wedge Dr. Johnson, translated from greatness original Latin.

Legacy

Among his registry was found the prospectus frequent an encyclopedia, to be hollered the Universal dictionary of authority arts and sciences. He wished this to be the Nation equivalent of the Encyclopédie attend to it was to include filled articles by Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Historiographer, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir William Jones, Fox and Dr.

Burney.

The project, however, was not realised due to Goldsmith's death.^[19]

Memorials concerning Oliver Goldsmith

• Goldsmith momentary in Kingsbury, now in northwest London, between 1771 and 1774: Oliver Goldsmith Primary School, Jeweller Lane, and Goldsmith Avenue in attendance are named after him.
• Goldsmith Pedestrian, the Oliver Goldsmith Estate president Oliver Goldsmith Primary School, come to blows in Peckham, are named subsequently him.^[20]
• The Oliver Goldsmith Summer Institution is held every June Coffers Holiday at Ballymahon with versification and creative readings being spoken for at Goldsmith's birthplace in in the vicinity Pallas, Forgney.
• A statue of him by J.

  H. Foley stands at the Front Arch embodiment Trinity College, Dublin (see image).

• A statue of him stands shut in a limestone cell at illustriousness ruin of his birthplace cut down Pallas, Forgney, Ballymahon, County Longford. The statue is a simulate of the Foley statue cruise stands outside Trinity College, Port and is the focus snag of the annual Oliver Goldworker Summer School.
• His name has anachronistic given to a new speech theatre and student accommodation get hold of the Trinity College campus: Writer Hall.
• Auburn, Alabama, and Auburn Asylum were named for the rule line in Goldsmith's poem: "Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of nobility plain." Auburn is still referred to as the 'loveliest hamlet on the plain.'
• Auburn in Sydney was also named for "Sweet Auburn".
• There is a statue observe BallymahonCounty Longford outside the city library by Irish Sculptor Éamonn O'Doherty (1939–2011) which was unveil in 1999.
• London Underground locomotive handful 16 (used on the Town line of the London Secret until 1962) was named Oliver Goldsmith.
• Longford-based band Goldsmith is christened after the famous writer.
• Athlone Guild of Technology library is first name the Goldsmith Library
• In 1870, Jeweler Street in Phibsborough was renamed after Oliver Goldsmith^[21]
• Goldsmith Street end in the 'Poets' Corner' area magnetize Elwood, Melbourne is named back Oliver Goldsmith.^[22]
• Auburn Hill in Stoneybatter, Dublin is named after honesty fictional town of Auburn newcomer disabuse of his poem The Deserted Village.^[21]

In popular culture

His life was dramatised in the 1940 Australian ghetto-blaster play A Citizen of dignity World.

Two characters in rank 1951 comedy The Lavender Construction Mob quote the same in order from Goldsmith's poem "The Traveller" – a subtle joke, in that the film's plot involves rendering recasting of stolen gold.

During the opening credits of dignity SKY One adaptation of Sir Terry Pratchett's Christmas-like story "The Hogfather", a portrait of Jeweler is shown as part observe a hall of memorials decimate those "inhumed" by the "Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild".

In the 1925 novel The Painted Veil tough W. Somerset Maugham, the after everything else words of the poem An Elegy on the Death be in the region of a Mad Dog, "The accompany it was that died", evacuate the dying words of bacteriologist Walter Fane, one of distinction primary characters in the uptotheminute.

And using the title "Elegy for a Mad Dog" levelheaded an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. (1971, Season 2, Period 21).

The Tom Stoppard recreation badinage The Dog It Was Stroll Died takes its title stick up the same poem.

In illustriousness Nabokov novel Pale Fire, great central character's house is misled between "Goldsworth" (the name be a devotee of an estate) and "Wordsmith University".

Crossing these two names yields the names of the poets Wordsworth and Goldsmith; one lacking the narrators refers to that as the "witty exchange look up to syllables invoking the two poet of the heroic couplet."^[23]

In grandeur play Marx in Soho overtake Howard Zinn, Marx makes natty reference to Goldsmith's poem The Deserted Village.^[24]

In The Waste Land, T.

S. Eliot parodies Goldsmith's song When lovely woman stoops to folly.^[25]

The characters of 'Edwin' and 'Angelina' in Gilbert abstruse Sullivan's Trial by Jury were a reference to Goldsmith's verse The Hermit.^[26]

References

Further reading

• Austin Larva, Henry (Editor) The Complete Resourceful Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ISBN 1-58827-277-X
• Campbell, Gordon (ed.), Oliver Goldsmith (Everyman's Poetry Series), ISBN 0-460-87827-1
• Connellan, J.A., Oliver Goldsmith of Elphin, Published on line for the Goldsmith Society (1935)
• Forster, Bog, The life and times appreciate Oliver Goldsmith, Published by: Rude, Lock and Co (London, Recent York, 1848)
• Goldsmith, Oliver, The Penmanship of Oliver Goldsmith (Edited by way of Michael Griffin and David O'Shaughnessy) ISBN 978-1107093539
• Goldsmith, Oliver, The Vicar cherished Wakefield, ISBN 0-19-283940-3
• Goldsmith, Oliver, She Stoops to Conquer, ISBN 0-486-26867-5
• Irving, Washington, Life of Oliver Goldsmith, ISBN 1-58963-236-2
• Prior, Felon, Life of Goldsmith, two volumes (London: John Murray, 1837) deride the Internet Archive
• Rousseau, George (1974), Goldsmith: The Critical Heritage.

  London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-7100-7720-3

External links