Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74) is an exemplary writer in the eighteenth-century pantheon. He was dexterous across the genres: the fictional tale The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), the long poem The Deserted Village (1770), and the dramatic comedy She Stoops to Conquer (1773) were recognized in their time, and continue to be acknowledged today, as masterpieces. His periodical journalism, including The Citizen of the World (1762), provides an often brilliantly ironic assessment of social, political, and cultural life in mid-Georgian London, while his popular historical and scientific writings contributed significantly to the anglophone Enlightenment and its educational culture. This Cambridge Edition of the Collected Works is the first full scholarly edition of Goldsmith’s writings in sixty years: it provides authoritative texts with full textual accounts, substantial introductions, and annotations which, with updated treatments of the critical heritage, will help the twenty-first-century reader to assess his oeuvre afresh.

• General Editors: David O’Shaughnessy, University of Galway, Michael Griffin, University of Limerick