Oliver Goldsmith, the son of an Anglican clergyman, was born in Ireland in 1728. Sent to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar—a student who performed menial tasks for other students in return for an allowance from the college—Goldsmith did not apply himself seriously to his studies, though he attained his undergraduate degree in 1749. After several false starts in choosing a career, he decided to pursue medicine. With the financial assistance of a generous uncle, Goldsmith attended the University of Edinburgh, but dropped out to travel on the European continent for several years. In 1756 he returned to England with a mysteriously acquired medical degree, but his attempts at finding employment as a physician were ultimately unsuccessful. Goldsmith then became a hack writer, working for Ralph Griffiths—proprietor of the Monthly Review—and later for the publisher Edward Newbury. After the 1759 publication of his An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (a treatise on the decline of fine arts in eighteenth-century Europe), Goldsmith became increasingly well-known as an author. Other successful works followed—a collection of essays known as Citizen of the World (1760-1761); a novel, The Vicar of Wakefield (1767); and the poems The Traveller (1764) and The Deserted Village (1770).
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