Goldsmith: English Men of Letters Series by William Black is a reflective and evocative biography about a well-known Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, dramatist, and poet, who is noted for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays. Excerpt: "Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream of life is wisdom." So wrote Oliver Goldsmith; and surely among those who have earned the world's gratitude by this ministration he must be accorded a conspicuous place. If, in these delightful writings of his, he mostly avoids the darker problems of existence…"
