About the Author
The Vicar of Wakefield’s plot full of unlikely twists and turns mirrors Oliver Goldsmith’s own tumultuous life. Born in 1728 in County Longford, Ireland, to an Anglican country vicar, Goldsmith succumbed to smallpox that severely marked his already unusual face. He attended Trinity College in Dublin in 1744 as a “sizar,” or poor student who had to wear a special robe to indicate his inferior status, and then studied medicine at Edinburgh University. When his landlady had him arrested for not paying rent, Samuel Johnson rushed the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield to a bookseller in 1762, securing Goldsmith’s status as acclaimed writer.
