{\b Oliver Goldsmith}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 10 November 1728

{\b Date of Death}.: 4 April 1774

{\b Works}.

An Enquiry into the present State of Polite Learning in Europe  (1759), The 
Traveler  (1764), The Vicar of Wakefield  (1766), The Good Natur'd Man  
(1768),The Deserted Village  (1770), She Stoops to Conquer  (1773), 
Retaliation  (1774), The Haunch of Venison (published posthumously 1776).

{\b Featured Works}.

'She Stoops to Conquer', 'When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly', 'An Elegy on the 
Death of a Mad Dog', 'An Elegy on the Glory of Her Sex, Mrs Mary Blaize', The 
Deserted Village, 'The Vicar of Wakefield', 'Sweet Auburn'.

{\b General Comment}.

Irish poet, dramatist and essayist, Oliver Goldsmith was born either in 
Pallas, County Longford or Elphin, Roscommon. He was the second son of an 
Anglican clergyman, and spent much of his childhood at Lissoy which he drew on 
when writing The Deserted Village. He had a severe attack of smallpox at the age 
of eight which left him badly disfigured for life. In 1744 he went as a sizar to 
Trinity College, Dublin, ran away in 1746, but returned to graduate with a 
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1749. After several false starts in choosing a career, 
a generous uncle sent him in 1752 to Edinburgh University to study medicine. 
Instead of taking a degree he travelled throughout Europe, from which travels he 
drew on in The Vicar of Wakefield  (1766). In 1756 he returned destitute to London,
and practised as a physician in Southwark and as an usher in Peckham. He 
corrected proofs for Samuel Richardson and drifted into the profession of hack 
writer for Ralph Griffiths proprietor of the Monthly Review. In 1759 he published 
his first substantial work, An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning 
in Europe, which documents what he felt to be the decline of the fine arts in mid-
eighteenth-century Europe, owing to the lack of enlightened patronage and the bad 
influence of criticism and scholarship. From this time onwards he earned 
substantial amounts of money from his writing, contributing to The Busy Body, The 
Monthly Review, and The Critical Review  amongst others. His plays, particularly 
She Stoops to Conquer (1773), were immensely popular. However he was extravagant 
in taste and generous to a fault, and so died leaving debts of £2000. He never 
married, but had a long and close relationship with Mary Horneck. 

His prose, drama and poetry are distinguished by their exceptionally high 
standard as well as by their variety in style and subject matter. His poetic 
style has been deemed harmonious and pure, and his drama unique in its 
transcendence of ethical or social criticism. His prose works are 
characterised by humour and astute observation.