THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH / 1906

Goldsmith, Oliver.  THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.  London: Henry Frowde, 1906.  8vo (approx 5 x 7.5”).  xxxix, 278 pp.  Full "Tree Leather" binding, ornate gilt decorated spine with five raised bands, each compartment decorated with intricate gilt decoration, gilt lettering on black leather label, "Oxford," gilt, in last compartment.  Both boards with dramatic tree leather pattern, gilt ruled margins with corner decoration on both boards. Edges marbled.  Illustrated with 20 full-page engravings and engraved frontispiece. Edited by Austin Dobson.

Oxford Edition. Hardcover in custom full tree-calf leather binding, hinges starting, a sumptuous volume. Contents exceptionally clean and bright, virtually as new. A very rare binding. VERY GOOD+.

Revised and enlarged printing of the 1887 edition.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728 -1774) was an Irish writer and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) , and his plays The Good-natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771) . 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 Pallas, near Ballymahon, County Longford, where his father was Anglican curate of the parish of Forgney. When he was aged two, his father was appointed rector of the parish of Kilkenny West in County Westmeath. The family moved to the parsonage at Lissoy, between Athlone and Ballymahon, and continued to live there until his father's death in 1747.Goldsmith earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1749 at Trinity College, Dublin, studying theology and law but never getting as far as ordination. Nevertheless, his name has been given to a new lecture theatre and student accommodation on the Trinity College campus, Goldsmith Hall. He later studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Leiden, then toured Europe, living on his wits. On his return, he settled in London, where he worked as an apothecary's assistant.

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". The combination of his literary work and his dissolute lifestyle led Horace Walpole to giving him the much quoted epithet of Inspired Idiot. Goldsmith is recorded as being a highly jealous man, a likeable but disorganized character who once failed to emigrate to America because he missed the ferry.