Write a short note on the social and political setting of Oliver Goldsmith.
Literary patronage was coming to an end. Writers began to depend now more on themselves and on the reading public, and no less on the grabbing booksellers as we have seen in the case of Goldsmith. There was closer contact with life on the part of writers. Goldsmith knew all the hard grind and drudgery too of literary activities.
The result is seen in the increasing social content of literature, a greater consciousness of what was due to the reading public, which infiltrated into the minds of the writers of the day. But soon the profession was on the way to independence.
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The spectator extended the circle of readers. Addison took upon himself the task of educating the public about morality and criticism while at the same time, he amused it with satire and character - sketches. The political and economic conditions of England fostered the growth of social consciousness and the expansion of literary activities. The trend was "practical humanism ". Economic progress was no doubt responsible for the growth of social consciousness. England was heading for industrial prosperity. The commercial prosperity chiefly centred in London. From the literature of the period, we have a glowing picture of the countryside. In his Tour, Defoe seems to paint it in rosy colours. Thomson's Seasons, Gay's Rural Sports, and Dyer's Fleece, all breathe an atmosphere of growing prosperity. Nor should it be forgotten that the evolution of social order in the eighteenth century was accompanied by violence. The literature of the period reflects a passionate desire for rule and order. The reason was the basis for an ordered life. Goldsmith in his Account of the Augustan Age bears witness to the accomplishment of these ends. A happy union of literature and polite society was the marked characteristic of the age. We are mainly concerned here with one of the dramas of Goldsmith, which marked a new development in the dramatic literature of the day.
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