Oliver Goldsmith
1728–1774
Biography
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) was an Anglo-Irish writer who worked in poetry, the novel, drama and periodical essays. He wrote for a living for most of his life, often under financial strain. He spent his early years in Ireland, and in 1756 he settled in London, where he came to know the writers who would shape his career. From the 1760s his friendship with Samuel Johnson was among the most important of his life, and in 1764 he became one of the earliest members of the circle of writers and thinkers that gathered around Johnson, known as The Club. He died in London in 1774, at about forty-five, and was buried in the Temple Church.
His reputation rests on several works. The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his only novel, remains one of the best-known novels of the eighteenth century. His comedies for the London stage, including The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1773), are ranked second only to Shakespeare's in the English theatre. The Deserted Village (1770) is a poem about the emptying of the countryside, and his series of essays The Citizen of the World began in 1760. Critics credit him with bringing sentimentalism into English literature, and later novelists, including Dickens, Austen, George Eliot and Mary Shelley, referred to his characters in their own books.
The site holds She Stoops to Conquer, the comedy first staged in London in 1773. Its plot turns on a mistake: a young London gentleman, Marlow, takes the country house of Mr Hardcastle for an inn and treats its family as though they were its servants, while the mischievous Tony Lumpkin keeps the confusion going. Goldsmith argued for comedy that makes audiences laugh rather than weep, against the sentimental drama of his day, and this play is his best-known answer to it. It remains a staple of theatre study and performance. Readers who know him mainly from The Vicar of Wakefield will find a quicker, more comic writer here.
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Books
She Stoops to Conquer
by Oliver Goldsmith
Two young gentlemen travelling to a country house are tricked by a practical joker into thinking it is an inn, and treat their host as an innkeeper. Kate Hardcastle, who finds the shy suitor tongue-tied before ladies, passes herself off as a barmaid to win him.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.