The complete online text of Oliver Goldsmith by Washington Irving.

"I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the fiddle & frenchhorn," Washington Irving said in an 1819 letter. While his flute music for a time was a dominant strain, it still remains discernible in t...

Washington Irving was America's first successful professional man of letters, a gifted teller of tales, especially as a native humorist, a romantic historian, and an influential prose stylist. As a writer by profession, with The Sketch Book (1819-1820) i...

Washington Irving was America's first successful professional man of letters, a gifted teller of tales, especially as a native humorist, a romantic historian, and an influential prose stylist. As a writer by profession, with the Sketch Book (1819-1820) i...

Oliver Goldsmith's skillful translation of two letters written by Voltaire is examined. The author examines how he edited some of Voltaire words to make them more acceptable to the English reading public. Generally speaking, Goldsmith scholarship has fallen on hard times in recent...

Many critics have based a claim of friendship between Thomas Paine and Oliver Goldsmith on slender evidence. Paine wrote to Goldsmith for support about improving the salary of excise officers, but there is no evidence Goldsmith made any response to Paine's request. The belief...