Oliver Goldsmith

Dalziels' Illustrated Goldsmith (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The middle of the last century was an evil time, in England, for literature and for literary men. The period was eminently one of transition; and transition periods are always times of trial to all whose interests they affect. The old system passes away, bearing with it those who cling to it; the new system requires time until it is in working order, and those who depend upon its advent for their subsistence are sorely harassed while the turmoil lasts. Thus it was with literature at the time when Goldsmith began to write. The age in which literary men depended upon patrons had passed away. No more snug government berths, no more secretaryships, as in the time of Addison and Prior and Steele-and the time when the public was to support literature had not yet come. Thus the author was compelled either to depend entirely on the booksellers, or to sell his pen, in true hireling fashion, to the government of the day, or to the opposition, and to scribble approval or invective at his master's dictation. Happily for his own fame, happily for English literature, the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" chose the former alternative...

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: anboco
• Seitenzahl: 500
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. August 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9783736405967
• Artikelnr.: 45475541

Autorenporträt

Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish author, playwright, dramatist, and poet who lived from 10 November 1728 to 4 April 1774. Goldsmith claimed to a biographer that he was born on November 10, 1728, yet his exact birthdate and year are unknown. He was either born in the Smith Hill House in the vicinity of Elphin, County Roscommon, or at Pallas, close to Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland. His schooling seems to have mostly given him a liking for expensive clothing, card games, Irish tunes, and playing the flute. Goldsmith, a perpetual debtor and gambling addict, wrote a ton for London's publishers while working as a hack writer on Grub Street. To publish his 1758 translation of the memoirs of the Huguenot Jean Marteilhe, he assumed the alias ""James Willington"" at this time. His contemporaries regarded him as envious, impulsive, and disorganized, with a history of planning to immigrate to America but failing because he missed his ship. The incorrect diagnosis of his kidney ailment before his untimely death in 1774 may have contributed to it. Goldsmith was laid to rest in London's Temple Church. At the location of his interment, a memorial honoring him had previously been erected, but it had been destroyed in a 1941 air strike.