GOLDSMITH, Oliver.

Essays by Mr. Goldsmith.

London: Printed for W. Griffin, in Fetter-Lane , 1765.

$475.00

In Stock Item Number: RRB-140433

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"Where wealth accumulates, men decay": First edition of Essays by Mr. Goldsmith

First edition of the collected essays of Oliver Goldsmith which paid the author a profit of only 20 guineas but greatly extended his reputation. Octavo, bound in full contemporary calf, rebacked retaining the contemporary spine label, copperplate vignette to the title page. One of two 1765 editions; Scott argues for the priority of this cheaper of the two editions, but Rothschild suggests also that it may be a piracy. Rothschild 1027. In good condition. Small ownership inscriptions and bookplate.

Oliver Goldsmith was 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 The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765). Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ron Powers notes that the Readers affected the first mass-educated and mass-literate generation in the modern world. The books made Shakespeare's plays widely known in America. Author Hamlin Garland said "I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the selected scenes which I read in these books."