In the Library
The Vicar of Wakefield
Oliver Goldsmith, 1766
- Form
- Form Novel
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Moderate
- Reading time
- Reading time 4.5 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 32
- Length
- Length 62k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray,
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
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Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe does the same thing, but strands its hero alone on an island instead of surrounded by a family testing its faith together.
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Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice does the same thing, but trades the vicar ruin for a mother schemes, marrying off daughters against a shifting family fortune.
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About the book
"When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?" Olivia sings it one evening in her father's house, not yet knowing how soon it will be sung of her. Squire Thornhill seduces her under a mock marriage and vanishes, and the Primroses, already ruined by a bankrupt merchant and driven to a humbler parish, absorb it as they absorb everything: the house that burns, the debtor's prison into which the same squire, out of spite, has the vicar thrown. Through it all Dr. Primrose preaches his one creed, that goodness is its own reward and Providence keeps its accounts honestly, a faith so complete it can look like a gentler folly than his daughter's. Goldsmith loved his vicar too much to let that joke stay cruel for long. What survives is not the fortune but the forgiveness, offered before it is earned, and a happiness that arrives looking almost like a miracle, because the man receiving it never once stopped expecting one.