Oliver Goldsmith

Playwright, novelist, and poet, born in Kildare, E Ireland. He studied erratically at Dublin, tried law at London then medicine at Edinburgh, drifted to Leyden, and returned penniless in 1756. He practised as a physician in London, held several temporary posts, and took up writing and translating. The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) secured his reputation as a novelist, ‘The Deserted Village’ (1770) as a poet, and She Stoops to Conquer (1773) as a dramatist.

Oliver Goldsmith (November 10, 1730(?) – April 4, 1774) was an Irish writer and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) (written in memory of his brother), and his plays The Good-natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771)and first performed in 1773. (He is also thought to have written the classic children's tale, The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, giving the world that familiar phrase.)

He was born in the townland of Pallas, near Ballymahon, County Longford, where his father was Anglican curate of the parish of Forgney.

Goldsmith earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1749 at Trinity College, Dublin, studying theology and law but never getting as far as ordination. Perennially in debt and addicted to gambling, Goldsmith had a massive output as a hack writer for the publishers of London, but his few painstaking works earned him the company of Samuel Johnson, along with whom he was a founding member of "The Club".

Goldsmith is recorded as being a highly jealous man, a likeable but disorganised character who once failed to emigrate to America because he missed the ferry.

He was buried in Temple Church;

Goldsmith's birth date is not known for certain. According to the Library of Congress authority file, he told a biographer that he was born on November 29, 1731 or perhaps 1730. November 10, 1730 is now the most commonly accepted birth date, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.