Goldsmith, Oliver 1730-1774
Irish playwright, novelist and poet

Born in Pallasmore, County Longford, he was educated at local schools and Trinity College, Dublin. In 1752 he went to Edinburgh to study medicine, but was more noted for his social gifts than his professional skills and drifted to Leyden, set out to make the 'grand tour' on foot, but returned penniless in 1756. He practised as a poor physician in Southwark, and was proofreader to Samuel Richardson, before publishing a translation of the Memoirs of Jean Marteilhe, a persecuted French Protestant, in 1758. An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759) attracted some notice. Goldsmith started and edited a weekly, The Bee (1759), and wrote essays for Tobias Smollett's British Magazine. For John Newbery's Public Ledger he wrote the Chinese Letters (1760-71, republished as The Citizen of the World). The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) secured his reputation as a novelist, The Deserted Village (1770) as a poet, and three years later he also achieved high regard as a playwright with She Stoops to Conquer.

Bibliography: G S Rousseau, Oliver Goldsmith: The Critical Heritage (1974); S Gwinn, Oliver Goldsmith (1935).