Oliver Goldsmith

Biography

(1735-1774)

A well educated Irishman with a medical degree and little skill or taste for medicine, Oliver Goldsmith found himself in London, trying to make it as a periodical contributor when he made his first break through with a book of satirical essays, The Citizen of the World (1762). The book opened doors and provided the financial means wherewith to pursue his writing career while he practiced medicine. He published The Traveler in 1764, and then The Deserted Village in 1770. He published his two most famous works, comedies, The Good-natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer in 1768 and 1773 respectively. Throughout his life in London he worked as an apothecary's assistant, and between that and his writing, he made a fair living. However, gambling habits and bad money management made life difficult for him. Thankfully he was a better writer than he was a physician, for reports suggest that his own personal misdiagnoses of a kidney problem may have caused his death.

(Compiled by Joey Franklin)

See also

Essays by Oliver Goldsmith

A city night piece

Tenderness, without a capacity of relieving, only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.

The sagacity of certain insects

Of all the solitary insects I have ever remarked, the spider is the most sagacious, and its motions to me, who have attentively considered them, seem almost to exceed belief.

Sights and monsters

By their fondness of sights, one would be apt to imagine, that instead of desiring to see things as they should be, they are rather solicitous of seeing them as they ought not to be.
Patrick Madden's New Book
Quotidiana by Patrick Madden
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