Literary Works

Illustration in Goldsmith's A History of the Earth and Animated Nature.

Leaving the Deserted Village.

Goldsmith's literary output over the next fourteen years of his life was extensive however much of this work, such as his eight-volume History of the Earth and Animated Nature, has not dated very well and is today, in relation to modern prose, essentially unreadable.

Nevertheless some of his work has stood the test of time and so assured his literary reputation. His most famous works include two long poems - The Traveller and The Deserted Village, two plays - The Good Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer, as well as his novel The Vicar of Wakefield.

The Traveller embodied both Goldmith's memories of tramping throughout Europe and his political ideas. Like Maria Edgeworth he was not averse to criticising his own class and this is also evident in his later poem The Deserted Village, which although containing charming vignettes of rural life also denounces the evictions of the country poor at the hands of wealthy landowners. In fact like Edgeworth, although the concept of an Irish literature in English was outside his experience, The Deserted Village rehearses an idea so prevalent in Irish literature over the next three centuries; that is a forecast of the downfall of Britain, the imperialist, through greed.

He produced the first anti-imperialistic poem in the period of England's expansion and also produced a poem way ahead of its time for its views on social and environmental issues. In The Deserted Village the fall of "Auburn" signifies the erosion of traditional values and natural rhythms, with the rural social order that had existed for centuries being destroyed, to be replaced by commercialism together with its inherent problems. This is a theme which was later to be picked up on by William Wordsworth.

Goldsmith's two plays The Vicar of Wakefield and She Stoops to Conquer have also aged remarkably well. Although they are not flawless (like The Deserted Village they often display excess sentimentality in places) they have survived largely by virtue of their broadly farcical horseplay and vivid humorous characterisations, and also because the human spirit, whatever trials it endures and whatever injustices visited upon it, particularly by the social conventions of that time, emerges relatively unscathed.