Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet, and physician, best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield andhis pastoral poem The Deserted Village, written in memory of his brother. He also penned a work of natural history in eight volumes A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature, the classic childrens’ tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the philosophical poem The Traveller, and the ironic poem An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog.

Goldsmith published a series of letters in the Public Ledger under the title The Citizen of the World. Purportedly written by a Chinese traveller in England by the name of Lien Chi, they used this fictional outsider's perspective to comment ironically and at times moralistically on British society and manners.

Goldsmith’s plays include The Good-Natur’d Man (Pearl Theatre) and She Stoops To Conquer (Arena Stage).