The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by the Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762, and published in 1766. It was one of the most popular and widely read 18th century novels among 19th century Victorians, for instance mentioned in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and Villette, Louisa May Al...
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The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by the Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762, and published in 1766. It was one of the most popular and widely read 18th century novels among 19th century Victorians, for instance mentioned in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and Villette, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther as well as his Dichtung und Wahrheit.
Dr Samuel Johnson, who was one of Goldsmith's closest friends, told how The Vicar of Wakefield came to be sold for publication:
The novel was The Vicar of Wakefield, and Johnson had sold it to Francis Newbery, a nephew of John. Newbery "kept it by him for nearly two years unpublished".
Dr Primrose, his wife Deborah and their six children live an idyllic life in a country parish. The vicar is well-off due to investing an...
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