Oliver Goldsmith has a historical place in Canadian letters as the first published native-born poet. His poem The Rising Village (1825) is the first extended treatment in verse of the difficulties encountered by settlers in what are now the Maritime Provinces and of the development of colonial village life. As a response and a sequel to his namesake and great-uncle's The Deserted Village (1770), it presents contrasts with the decaying life of the Old World but in doing so offers ironies, not all of them conscious, and complexities of its own. Recent critical studies have shown it to be a far more interesting poem than literary history had previously acknowledged.

Third son and ninth child of Henry Goldsmith, an Irish-born Loyalist officer, Oliver was born in St. Andrew's, New Brunswick. Following a fire that destroyed their property near that town, Henry moved with his family in 1896 first to Annapolis Royal...