The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith

Retrieved from: the library (and it needs to be replaced, I'm afraid)

Here is our online catalog's record for this edition of this book:

Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774.
The Vicar of Wakefield
[S.l. : s.n.]
xcv, [97]-278 p. ; 14 cm.
T.p. missing.
"The life of Dr. Goldsmith": p. [xiii]-xcv.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774.

Messy record, messy copy of the book: loose pages, mostly yellowed paper...

BUT, it also had big print and fun illustrations, so I guess you take what you can find. No clue what year this was published: before I was born, probably before WWII even.

I read the book because we were in Wakefield this summer. However, it appears that most of this book does not actually take place in Wakefield, after about page 10. If you are a fan of Jane Austen, this book might be very enjoyable for you. I found it deadly, although I finished it because I kept thinking it had to get better. Very mannered, very 18th century, very sexist, very classist...and all very neatly tied up in the end.

By the last few pages I was chuckling over how a director would film the denouement, which takes place in the debtor's prison and involves pretty much EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the novel, all in the cell together.

Sorry, it makes me laugh just writing that. Lightweight. Didactic. But I smiled, so I can't be too hard on it (even though I'm not sure all the humor was intended).