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Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Ed. by M. Macmillan
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield Ed by M Macmillan Author:Oliver Goldsmith General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1897 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: NOTES. Wakefield is a town in Yorkshire. Mr. Ford, in the National Review (May 1883), shows that Goldsmith strictly adheres to the topography of the district round Wakefield, although changing the names of the other places except Wakefield. The same writer brings forward good circumstantial evidence to prove that between 1760 and 1762 Goldsmith travelled on foot through this part of England for the benefit of his health, and also that some of the incidents in the novel were suggested by what actually occurred on his pedestrian tour. He is also wonderfully successful in identifying the places mentioned in The Vicar of Wakejield with real places in the neighbourhood of Wakefield, and shows thereby that Goldsmith knew well the topography of that part of Yorkshire. The initial difficulty is to discover the nameless parish to which the Vicar went after leaving Wakefield. His new parish was "a journey of seventy miles " from Wakefield, and at this distance is Kirkby Moorside on the banks of the river Dove. Assuming that the Vicar's new home was Kirkby Moorside, Mr. Ford finds no difficulty in identifying the other places mentioned in the story. Thornhill Castle, "a few miles off," is Helmsley, the mansion of the estate within which Kirkby Moorside lay. Welbridge Fair, where Moses and the Vicar were cheated by Ephraim Jenkinson, is evidently the same as the small market town of Welburn, at a distance of a mile from Kirkby Moorside. In his pursuit of Olivia the Vicar went first a journey of thirty miles to the Wells, and then "thirty miles further" on "to the Races." These distances point to the conclusion th...« less