Reading Order
The Vicar of Wakefield Reading Order
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) by Oliver Goldsmith is one of the most widely read novels of the eighteenth century — a sentimental comedy organized around the misfortunes and eventual restoration of the Primrose family, narrated by the Vicar himself, Dr. Charles Primrose. The novel combines an almost incredible sequence of disasters (Primrose loses his fortune; his daughter Olivia is seduced and abandoned by the villain Squire Thornhill; his house burns down; he is imprisoned for debt; another daughter is nearly abducted) with a tone of serene benevolence that is the comedy's characteristic note: the Vicar maintains his trust in Providence and his affection for his family through everything. The novel is organized around the sentimental movement's central conviction that feeling is a guide to moral truth — the Vicar's goodness consists primarily in his capacity for sympathetic feeling — and it was wildly popular throughout Europe, particularly in Germany (where Goethe credited it with a decisive influence on his development and quoted it in Faust). Johnson famously helped Goldsmith sell the manuscript to pay his landlady; the novel was eventually published in 1766 to great success.
Where to start
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) — the complete novel. Good modern editions include Oxford World's Classics (with Arthur Friedman's notes) and Penguin Classics.
Complete The Vicar of Wakefield Book List
- 1Buy
The Vicar of Wakefield
Oliver Goldsmith·1766·The complete novel — Dr. Primrose, Olivia, Squire Thornhill, and the Burchell/Thornhill revelation. Goldsmith's only novel; the Oxford World's Classics edition is the standard scholarly edition - 2Buy
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift·1726·Swift's companion — the satirical travel narrative. The companion as the predecessor in the same period: where The Vicar of Wakefield is organized around sentimental benevolence and the trust in Providence, Gulliver's Travels is organized around satirical disgust at human nature — the two poles of the eighteenth-century English attitude toward humanity - 3Buy
Pamela
Samuel Richardson·1740·Richardson's companion — the first great sentimental novel. The companion as the predecessor of the sentimental novel: where Richardson uses the letter-form and Pamela's moral vulnerability to investigate the same trust in Providence and the same conviction that feeling is a guide to moral truth, Goldsmith uses the first-person narrator and the accumulation of disasters - 4Buy
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe·1774·Goethe's companion — Werther's fatal passion. The companion as the German response: Goethe was deeply influenced by The Vicar of Wakefield and quoted it in Faust; The Sorrows of Young Werther is the German sentimental novel organized around the same conviction that feeling is the highest human faculty, but taken to its tragic extreme - 5Buy
She Stoops to Conquer
Oliver Goldsmith·1773·Goldsmith's companion comedy — the Hardcastle household and the Marlowe mistake. The companion as the theatrical version of the same investigation: both The Vicar of Wakefield and She Stoops to Conquer are organized around the same comic benevolence and the same investigation of the relationship between sentiment and social comedy - 6Buy
Rasselas
Samuel Johnson·1759·Johnson's companion philosophical tale — Rasselas's search for the happy life. The companion as the eighteenth-century philosophical tale in its different mode: where Goldsmith's novel is organized around sentimental comedy and the trust in Providence, Johnson's is organized around the melancholy recognition that human happiness is not available in any earthly form - 7Buy
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding·1749·Fielding's companion — the foundling Tom and his adventures. The companion as the predecessor in the comic-sentimental tradition: Fielding's investigation of the good-natured hero in a world of snobbery and hypocrisy is the predecessor of Goldsmith's investigation of the good-natured Vicar in a world of disaster and villainy - 8Buy
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen·1811·Austen's companion investigation of the same questions — the relationship between feeling and judgment, sentiment and sense. The companion as the successor: Austen's critique of the sentimental tradition (Marianne's 'sensibility' as dangerous excess) is organized partly against the tradition of sentimental novels like The Vicar of Wakefield, and reading them together illuminates Austen's complex relationship to that tradition
The Vicar of Wakefield — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Vicar of Wakefield about?
The Vicar of Wakefield is about the misfortunes and eventual restoration of the Primrose family, narrated by the Vicar himself, Dr. Charles Primrose. The Vicar begins in comfortable prosperity; loses his fortune when his agent absconds with it; moves his family to a smaller living; allows his daughter Olivia to be seduced and apparently abandoned by the local squire Thornhill (who has already prevented Olivia's proper marriage by bribing the clergyman); has his house burn down; discovers that his son George has been cheated in London; is imprisoned for debt when he cannot pay Thornhill; and then, from prison, watches his family suffer without being able to help. The novel then resolves all these misfortunes with a speed and completeness that is itself a comic characteristic: the beneficent Burchell turns out to be the great Sir William Thornhill, Squire Thornhill's uncle, who can and does set everything right.
Why is The Vicar of Wakefield famous?
The Vicar of Wakefield is famous for several reasons. It was one of the most widely read novels in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — Goethe read it as a young man and credited it with a decisive influence on his development, quoting it in Faust; it was enormously popular in Germany, France, and England. It is the exemplary sentimental novel of the eighteenth century — the most complete expression of the sentimental movement's conviction that feeling is a guide to moral truth and that benevolence is the highest human quality. It is also Samuel Johnson's story: Johnson helped Goldsmith sell the manuscript to pay his landlady at a moment when Goldsmith was nearly destitute, and the novel's publication became part of the mythology of Grub Street and the eighteenth-century literary world. And it has a plot of almost incredible comic-disaster density — the sheer accumulation of misfortunes that befall the Primrose family has been both satirized and admired since its publication.
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