Oliver Goldsmith summary

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Oliver Goldsmith, oil painting from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1770; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

Oliver Goldsmith, (born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London, Eng.), Irish-born British essayist, poet, novelist, and dramatist. Goldsmith attended Trinity College in Dublin before studying medicine in Edinburgh. Settling in London, he began writing essays, some of which were collected in The Citizen of the World (1762). In 1764 he became an original member of Samuel Johnson’s famous Club. He won a reputation as a poet with The Traveller (1764), confirmed by his famous pastoral elegy The Deserted Village (1770). The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) revealed his skill as a novelist. The charming farce She Stoops to Conquer (1773) was his most effective play. Noted for his exceptionally graceful, lively style, Goldsmith was a friend of many literary lights of his day, who agreed that he was one of the oddest personalities of his time.

essay Summary

Essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view. Some early treatises—such as those of Cicero on the

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

novel Summary

Novel, an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting. Within its broad framework, the genre of the novel has encompassed an