High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1730 – 4 April 1774) was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) (written in memory of his brother), and his plays The Good-Natur`d Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He also wrote An History of the Earth and Animated Nature. He is thought to have written the classic children`s tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of the phrase "goody two-shoes".