Oliver Goldsmith

4 snips

Mar 20, 2025

Guest

David O’Shaughnessy, a Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Judith Hawley, specializing in Eighteenth-Century Literature, and Michael Griffin, an expert in English, explore the multifaceted brilliance of Oliver Goldsmith. They discuss his journey from a struggling writer in London to a celebrated literary figure. Key topics include his renowned works like 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and 'She Stoops to Conquer', the nostalgic and social critiques in his poetry, and the enduring legacy he left in literature and theatre, revealing both his quirky kindness and intricate personality.

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ANECDOTE

Goldsmith's Wit

Young Goldsmith was called Aesop due to his appearance after suffering from smallpox.
He cleverly retorted, "Aesop dancing and his monkey playing."

ANECDOTE

Goldsmith's False Starts

Goldsmith tried emigrating to America but missed the boat.
He gambled away his lawyer training funds and then studied medicine in Edinburgh.

INSIGHT

Goldsmith in Grub Street

Grub Street was a literary sweatshop where writers worked for hire.
Goldsmith, arriving penniless in London, began his career there reviewing books.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the renowned and versatile Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728 - 1774). There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner written by Dr Johnson, celebrating Goldsmith's life as a poet, natural philosopher and historian. To this could be added ‘playwright’ and ‘novelist’ and ‘science writer’ and ‘pamphleteer’ and much besides, as Goldsmith explored so many different outlets for his talents. While he began on Grub Street in London, the centre for jobbing writers scrambling for paid work, he became a great populariser and compiler of new ideas and knowledge and achieved notable successes with poems such as The Deserted Village, his play She Stoops to Conquer and his short novel The Vicar of Wakefield.

With

David O’Shaughnessy Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Galway

Judith Hawley Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

And

Michael Griffin Professor of English at the University of Limerick

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Norma Clarke, Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street (Harvard University Press, 2016)

Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age (Yale University Press, 2019)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Aileen Douglas and Ian Campbell Ross), The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale, Supposed to Be Written by Himself (first published 1766; Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Arthur Friedman), The Vicar of Wakefield (first published 1766; Oxford University Press, 2008)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Arthur Friedman), The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 5 vols (Clarendon Press, 1966) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Robert L. Mack), Oliver Goldsmith: Everyman’s Poetry, No. 30 (Phoenix, 1997)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. James Ogden), She Stoops to Conquer (first performed 1773; Methuen Drama, 2003)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. James Watt), The Citizen of the World (first published 1762; Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Nigel Wood), She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies (first performed 1773; Oxford University Press, 2007)

Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy (eds.), Oliver Goldsmith in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy (eds.), The Letters of Oliver Goldsmith (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), The Poems of Gray, Collins and Goldsmith (Longmans, 1969)

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