The Vicar of Wakefield is a tale with marriage at its core. This chapter puts that preoccupation in historical and cultural context, accounting for the importance of the Whistonian controversy and Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1753 as backdrops to a novel which does not merely reflect its time, but anticipates subsequent treatments of the institution of marriage in fiction.

This chapter shows how ‘Liberty’ gained an ideological colouring in the eighteenth century largely due to its capacity to embrace a number of artistic/political perspectives, from an opposition to the legacy of anti-Walpole sentiments derived from centralising governmental influence, to an aesthetic reversal of taste away from generic prescription to a specific association with Whiggish denial of some inherited property rights. Goldsmith is rarely regarded as a deep political thinker, yet he mixed with several who could be thought to be polemicists for Liberty. This chapter shows how his poetry (The Traveller and The Deserted Village), plays (The Good Natur’d Man and She Stoops to Conquer) and his prose (The Citizen of the World) gave voice to his interrogation of English libertarian myths.

‘Critical Reception before 1900’ presents the early history of Goldsmith’s critical reception and surveys concerns which recur in critical treatments. Two themes in particular recur. The first is that of an elegant versatility that fails to sustain its genius. A second critical theme sees apparently autobiographical episodes in Goldsmith’s works flow in to fill the gaps in his biography. Anecdotes of his character proliferated after his death in 1774, and 200 years later G. S. Rousseau would declare Goldsmith’s life to be the major obstacle to in-depth criticism of his writings. From the early nineteenth century a fondly sentimentalized authorial figure dominated responses to Goldsmith’s fiction and to the landscapes of his major poems. Some critics did consider the sociopolitical and moral arguments of Goldsmith’s works: his critiques of luxury and his comparative surveys of human happiness remained active in his familiar appeal to Victorian readers.

Ideas of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity were in flux throughout the eighteenth century. This chapter places Goldsmith’s comedies She Stoops to Conquer and The Good Natur’d Man at the heart of contemporary gender debates. The theatre was a significant site for the negotiation of gender where women’s sensitivity, modesty, and gentility were touted as positive social forces capable of reforming men and improving manners by conditioning women to please others. Goldsmith’s plays can be seen as part of the ‘feminization debate’ – British discourse which trumpeted the progressive effects of women on modern society while seeking to condemn perceived transgressions of an increasingly binary gender order.

Oliver Goldsmith’s knowledge of the language and literature of France is in evidence across his writing, traversing all genres embraced. In addition to his various engagements with translation work, French influences are in evidence right across Goldsmith’s journalism and essays, and are indeed omnipresent across his work. They are immediately apparent in his embracing of the sentimental novel with The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and in his playwriting, with French idioms and expressions throughout She Stoops to Conquer (1773), for example, with clear similarities to contemporary French characters and style immediately evident, alongside the commentary and reflections on French culture and stereotypes. The influence of French writing by men upon Goldsmith’s work has long been recognized and dissected, with various authors held up for particular recognition of their influence. This chapter will also seek to highlight and explore the intersections with explicitly female French influences on Goldsmith’s work, as well as determining his own legacy amongst various women writers and translators. Particular attention will be paid to interconnections with Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), Mme de Montesson (1738–1806), and Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (1713–92).

‘Editions’ focuses on posthumous editions of Goldsmith’s works. It traces the history of editions as a reflection of a gradual shift in Goldsmith’s popularity outside of university curricula. Editions in English and in translation are surveyed. A final section on academic editions begins with the pioneering work of Sir James Prior and Austin Dobson before considering the apotheosis of textual criticism on Goldsmith in the late 1960s. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the movement of editions of Goldsmith out of the home and into the university library, and out of the popular imagination and into the academy.

Satire and Sentiment’ proposes that the commingling of sentimental and satiric modes in Goldsmith’s oeuvre enables him to negotiate the tension between moral ideals and intractable historical structures, using the movement between sentimental and satiric registers to interrogate the difficulty of living in the face of the political, social, and economic changes in Great Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century. Focusing on novels like The Vicar of Wakefield, ‘spy narratives’ like The Citizen of the World, poems like The Traveller and The Deserted Village, and plays like She Stoops to Conquer, the chapter investigates what might be termed the performative dimension of sentimentality and satire in narrative, poetic, and dramatic forms.

Authorship’ lays out the range of positions on the place of the author in Goldsmith’s work, contextualizing it in the evolving literary field of mid-century publishing, and drawing on studies of authorship and the book trade ranging from Dustin Griffin, Linda Zionkowski, and Martha Woodmansee to more recent work by Nicholas Hudson and Mark Wildermuth. The chapter focuses primarily on two major texts, the Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759) and The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), where the issue of authorship comes most obviously to the fore.

This chapter argues that for Oliver Goldsmith religious belief was thoroughly embedded in the world. It was not defined by theological niceties or intellectual conviction but by the rhythms of Anglican ritual and everyday acts of reverence, piety, and benevolence. Culture and politics were, therefore, inseparable from religion. With this in mind, the religion/secular divide that permeates much of our contemporary thinking must be abandoned when we approach Goldsmith’s work. His engagement with religion should be assessed not according to the doctrines he explicitly espoused (or failed to espouse) but according to religion’s practical function within his oeuvre.

The sister arts, a concept linking poetry to painting, flourished during Goldsmith’s lifetime. Stemming from the ekphrasis of the ancients, the idea of the sister arts owes to the continental academies of painting during the seicento. Goldsmith became heir to the idea when he was named Professor of Ancient History in the Royal Academy of Painting. Founding president Reynolds exhibited a portrait of Goldsmith at the academy in 1770, the same year that Goldsmith published The Deserted Village. Two years later Reynolds based an allegorical character sketch called Resignation on lines from the poem. From its illustrated title page to its stirring peroration The Deserted Village reflects a continuing appeal to the mind’s eye, an appeal not lost on illustrators from Thomas Bewick and James Gillray to Francis Wheatley and William Hamilton, and many others. Their sketches of Goldsmith’s villagers remain engraved on the imagination of generations. This chapter explores the milieux that link Goldsmith to the visual arts, from his affiliation with the Royal Academy to his cosmopolitan interests.