Oliver Goldsmith
10 November 1730 - 04 April 1774
Oliver Goldsmith's date and place of birth are disputed, but the latter is most probably the village of Pallasmore in County Longford. Goldsmith graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently studied medicine with little enthusiasm in Edinburgh and Leiden. After a walking tour through Europe, during which he supported himself by begging and by playing the flute, he settled in London in 1756. Perennially in debt, Goldsmith produced a great output of work to support himself. He remains best known for for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer, first performed in 1773. A friend of Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith was a founder member of The Club which also counted fellow Irishman Edmund Burke among its members. Goldsmith died in London in 1774 and was buried in Temple Church.