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Oriental letters being a literary fad of the day, it was inevitable that Oliver Goldsmith should indulge his whim of "leaving scarcely any kind of writing untouched;" hence his series of Letters from Lien Chi Altangi, the Chinese philosopher in London.
These Chinese letters are in the strictest sense by a wide-experienced Citizen of the World. They photograph many a quaint character whose types are as familiar to us as his originals were to Goldsmith. The living portrait gallery will fit generations yet to come. Not characters only but movements, political and social, great problems in government, art, education, and taste are mirrored and discussed with a breadth and charm not found elsewhere. Goldsmith's many-sidedness is displayed in these Letters, which are occasionally elaborated in other of his writings.
This is a reprint of the Third Edition originally published in 1774.
About the author
Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish author, playwright, dramatist, and poet who lived from 10 November 1728 to 4 April 1774.
Goldsmith claimed to a biographer that he was born on November 10, 1728, yet his exact birthdate and year are unknown. He was either born in the Smith Hill House in the vicinity of Elphin, County Roscommon, or at Pallas, close to Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland. His schooling seems to have mostly given him a liking for expensive clothing, card games, Irish tunes, and playing the flute.
Goldsmith, a perpetual debtor and gambling addict, wrote a ton for London's publishers while working as a hack writer on Grub Street. To publish his 1758 translation of the memoirs of the Huguenot Jean Marteilhe, he assumed the alias "James Willington" at this time. His contemporaries regarded him as envious, impulsive, and disorganized, with a history of planning to immigrate to America but failing because he missed his ship. The incorrect diagnosis of his kidney ailment before his untimely death in 1774 may have contributed to it.
Goldsmith was laid to rest in London's Temple Church. At the location of his interment, a memorial honoring him had previously been erected, but it had been destroyed in a 1941 air strike.
