The Select Works: Vicar of Wakefield, Plays and Poems

Select Works of

O l i v e r G o l d s m i t h

comprising

The Vicar of Wakefield

Plays and Poems

London

Macmillan and Co. Limited

1901

DESCRIPTION

MacLehose of Glasgow Binding

(iv) + 434 + (iv)

Book measures 225mm x 150mm approximately.

Superbly bound in half rich green calf over gilt-ruled light green cloth covered boards by MacLehose of Glasgow. Spine with five gilt-ruled raised rope bands with glit boxed compartments and title in gilt. Marbled end-papers and paste-downs, and page top edges in gilt, remainder uncut.

CONDITION

The binding is in very good condition indeed and holding very firm. Boards and spine exhibit a few minor scuffs and surface scratches with moderate rubbing to hinges and some wear to board edges and corners. Internally the pages are generally very clean although the end-papers and last few paginated pages exhibit some foxing patches and spotting. Large previous owner bookplate central to front paste-down.

A very nice copy of Goldsmith's works in a lovely binding.

INTERESTING

Oliver Goldsmith (1728 to 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770). He is also thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).

In 1744, Goldsmith went up to Trinity College, Dublin. Neglecting his studies in theology and law, he fell to the bottom of his class. In 1747, along with four other undergraduates, he was expelled for a riot in which they attempted to storm the Marshalsea Prison.

Oliver Goldsmith's hugely successful novel, The Vicar of Wakefield of 1766 remained for generations one of the most highly regarded and beloved works of eighteenth-century fiction. It depicts the fall and rise of the Primrose family, presided over by the benevolent vicar, the narrator of a fairy-tale plot of impersonation and deception, the abduction of a beautiful heroine and the machinations of an aristocratic villain. By turns comic and sentimental, the novel's popularity owes much to its recognizable depiction of domestic life and loving family relationships.

In literary history books, The Vicar of Wakefield is often described as a sentimental novel, which displays the belief in the innate goodness of human beings. But it can also be read as a satire on the sentimental novel and its values, as the vicar's values are apparently not compatible with the real "sinful" world. It is only with Sir William Thornhill's help that he can get out of his calamities. Moreover, an analogy can be drawn between Mr. Primrose's suffering and the Book of Job. This is particularly relevant to the question of why evil exists.

The novel is mentioned in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Stendhal's The Life of Henry Brulard, Arthur Schopenhauer's "The Art of Being Right", Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins, Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and Villette, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.