The Vicar of Wakefield
Feb 2013 · Courier Corporation
Ebook
144
Pages
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About this ebook
Rich with wisdom and gentle irony, Oliver Goldsmith's only novel is a charming comedy that tells of an unworldly and generous vicar who lives contentedly with his large family until disaster strikes. When his idyllic life is brutally interrupted by bankruptcy and his daughter's abduction, he lands in prison. Yet these misfortunes fail to conquer the vicar's spirit or cause him to lose sight of Christian morality.
A delightful lampoon of such literary conventions of the day as pastoral scenes, artificial romance, and the hero's stoic bravery, The Vicar of Wakefield has remained a classic since its first publication in 1766.
A delightful lampoon of such literary conventions of the day as pastoral scenes, artificial romance, and the hero's stoic bravery, The Vicar of Wakefield has remained a classic since its first publication in 1766.
About the author
As Samuel Johnson said in his famous epitaph on his Irish-born and educated friend, Goldsmith ornamented whatever he touched with his pen. A professional writer who died in his prime, Goldsmith wrote the best comedy of his day, She Stoops to Conquer (1773). Amongst a plethora of other fine works, he also wrote The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), which, despite major plot inconsistencies and the intrusion of poems, essays, tales, and lectures apparently foreign to its central concerns, remains one of the most engaging fictional works in English. One reason for its appeal is the character of the narrator, Dr. Primrose, who is at once a slightly absurd pedant, an impatient traditional father of teenagers, a Job-like figure heroically facing life's blows, and an alertly curious, helpful, loving person. Another reason is Goldsmith's own mixture of delight and amused condescension (analogous to, though not identical with, Laurence Sterne's in Tristram Shandy and Johnson's in Rasselas, both contemporaneous) as he looks at the vicar and his domestic group, fit representatives of a ludicrous but workable world. Never married and always facing financial problems, he died in London and was buried in Temple Churchyard.
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