"Goody Two-Shoes" and The Vicar of Wakefield

The authorship of "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes; Otherwise called, Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes," perhaps the most popular eighteenth-century English moral tale for children, has long been an enigma. Published by John Newbery in 1765, "Goody Two-Shoes" remained in print for over 150 years, crossed the Atlantic within 10 years of its publication, and inspired a number of imitations and much speculation about its author, whose identity may never be definitely known. Most critics credit Giles and Griffith Jones, John Newbery, or Oliver Goldsmith with this children's classic.

The first scholar to delve into the question of authorship was Charles Welsh, John Newbery's biographer, who describes the scanty evidence to support the claim for the Jones brothers, authors of many tales for Newbery's Lilliputian Magazine: Giles Jones was the grandfather of Winter Jones, a librarian in the British Museum, whose catalogue attributes the book to Giles. Internal evidence consists only of the name Jones, the prominent family into which Margery Meanwell, the protagonist, marries (Welsh, Introduction xi). The strongest evidence supporting Newbery as author are the puffs to his other publications and to the medicines he sold, puffs which Newbery could easily have inserted during publication.

Although Arthur Friedman, editor of the Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith omits "Goody," never even mentioning it because his policy in establishing the Goldsmith canon was to omit works which had "evidence against them or a lack of evidence in their favour" (I, vii), support for Oliver Goldsmith as author has come from such writers as William Godwin and Washington Irving, who agree on the probability that Goldsmith wrote the famous nursery tale; Irving saw in its title the "sly and playful humour" of Goldsmith (Welsh, Introduction xvi-xvii). Charles Welsh quotes the daughters of Thomas Bewick, the talented artist whose woodcuts illustrate the T. Saint of Newcastle edition of the book, as saying that their father understood that Goldsmith wrote the tale (xvi). Welsh votes for Goldsmith also because of parallels in sentiment and style, particularly in the preface of "Goody Two-Shoes," to Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village," published some five years later (xviii-xx). Charlotte Yonge believes the comparison valid and notes further parallels in the style, the "dry humour" and the "tenderness" (xx-xxii).

The essay on land reform (from the preface of "Goody Two-Shoes") can be considered a specific example of the generalized theme of "The Deserted Village," which decries the increase of luxury and wealth among the few; Goldsmith feared such an increase would result in depopulation of the land in small villages, such as Auburn or Lissoy. Although the above-mentioned critics have noted the parallels between the wealthy Graspall and Gripe, villains who force Margery Meanwell's father to lose his farm, and the problems discussed in "The Deserted Village," they do not mention the similarity between the heroine of "Goody Two-Shoes" and the former residents of Auburn. Margery Meanwell possesses the principal characteristics of the modest, charitable preacher, the kind, but demanding schoolmaster, and even the village statesmen who live by "the twelve good rules" (1. 232). The concluding lines of "The Deserted Village" might be a credo for Margery Two-Shoes, who embodies the middle-class ideals of modesty, self-reliance, moderation, and endurance:

Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;Teach him that states of native strength possest,Tho' very poor, may still be very blest;That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away;While self dependent power can time defy,As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

(11. 424-30)

Twentieth-century critics speculate further. Florence Barry includes Newbery as a possible author, but believes that if either Newbery or the Jones brothers wrote "Goody Two-Shoes," then Goldsmith might well have contributed the ghost, the witch, and the considering cap sections (76). Goldsmith had already debunked the idea of ghosts in his essay "The Mystery Revealed Respecting the Supposed Cock-Lane Ghost" (1762). F. J. Harvey Darton, is more cautious, stating that "the tradition and the internal evidence...