The Citizen of the World is a highly readable yet deceptively sophisticated text, using the popular eighteenth-century device of the imaginary observer. Its main narrator, the Chinese philosopher Lien Chi Altangi, draws on traditional ideas of Confucian wisdom as he tries (and sometimes fails) to come to terms with the commercial modernity and spectacle of imperial London. Goldsmith explores a moment of economic and social transformation in Britain and at the same time engages with the ramifications of a global conflict, the Seven Years' War (1756–63). He also uses his travelling Chinese narrator as a way of indirectly addressing his own predicament as an Irish exile in London. This edition provides a reliable, authoritative text, records the history of its production, and includes an introduction and explanatory notes which situate this enormously rich work within the political debates and cultural conflicts of its time, illuminating its allusiveness and intellectual ambition.

‘Beautifully presented, meticulously edited, the first two volumes of the Cambridge Goldsmith give notice that the highest standards of scholarship based on immersion in Goldsmith studies will prevail. The edition’s general editors, Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy, bring both familiarity with Goldsmith’s oeuvre and reception history, and profound understanding of its complexities.’

Norma Clarke Source: The Times Literary Supplement