Oliver Goldsmith arrived in England in 1756 a penniless Irishman. He toiled for years in the anonymity of Grub Street—already a synonym for impoverished hack writers—before he became one of literary London’s most celebrated authors. Norma Clarke tells the extraordinary story of this destitute scribbler turned gentleman of letters as it unfolds in the early days of commercial publishing, when writers’ livelihoods came to depend on the reading public, not aristocratic patrons. Clarke examines a network of writers radiating outward from Goldsmith: the famous and celebrated authors of Dr. Johnson’s “Club” and those far less fortunate “brothers of the quill” trapped in Grub Street.

Clarke emphasizes Goldsmith’s sense of himself as an Irishman, showing that many of his early literary acquaintances were Irish émigrés: Samuel Derrick, John Pilkington, Paul Hiffernan, and Edward Purdon. These writers tutored Goldsmith in the ways of Grub Street, and their influence on his development has not previously been explored. Also Irish was the patron he acquired after 1764, Robert Nugent, Lord Clare. Clarke places Goldsmith in the tradition of Anglo-Irish satirists beginning with Jonathan Swift. He transmuted troubling truths about the British Empire into forms of fable and nostalgia whose undertow of Irish indignation remains perceptible, if just barely, beneath an equanimous English surface.

To read Brothers of the Quill is to be taken by the hand into the darker corners of eighteenth-century Grub Street, and to laugh and cry at the absurdities of the writing life.

"[Clarke] has created a colorful, canny, immensely readable book which rehearses, underlines and proclaims the importance, not only of Goldsmith himself, but also of his writerly world, of fraternal compatriots and infernal enemies, and of the ways that he and they found—or didn’t—to get by…She is a wizard at telling stories…You will get a helpful sense of the nature of all of Goldsmith’s lasting work from Brothers of the Quill…[A] rich volume." - Times Literary Supplement

"[Clarke’s] careful tracing of the networks of Irish affiliation in mid-18th-century London yields a completely new vision of both Goldsmith and the London he inhabited. Clarke concludes with a lament for the ‘taken-for-grantedness’ of the contributions of Irish writers to English literature in the 18th century. The braided, archipelagic histories of these islands have yet to be completed, but are certainly enhanced by this study of Goldsmith." - Times Higher Education

"The book often reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. In this regard, Clarke joins several contemporary English writers whose works brilliantly mix group biography, history and literary criticism…[Brothers of the Quill] displays a comparable sprightliness and anecdotal abundance." - Washington Post

"Brothers of the Quill is a rich book about poor writers, the duckers, divers and hacks-for-hire scratching a living in Dr. Johnson’s London. It is also a forensic reconstruction of Grub Street at the dawn of literary journalism: the friendships, the rivalries, the reign of the publishers…Brothers of the Quill is part biography, part social history and part literary criticism. If you have not read Goldsmith already, you will find yourself wanting to do so." - The Oldie

"Brothers of the Quill elegantly topples conventional accounts of Goldsmith’s career." - Irish Times

"In Brothers of the Quill Norma Clarke has made a significant and very readable contribution to 18th-century literary studies." - Literary Review

"Norma Clarke’s Brothers of the Quill follows Oliver Goldsmith’s rise from Irish hack to English national treasure. Goldsmith both cherished and reviled literary celebrity…Clarke say a great deal about the powerlessness of writers, and the growing authority of readers." - Times Literary Supplement

"Portrays an extraordinary period in literary history and captures the puzzling blend of principle and opportunism that defined Goldsmith’s career." - Catholic Herald

"Clarke has made the literary life of the 18th century available and entertaining to the general reader." - The Guardian