The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

This is a novel that I've often referred to as the grandfather of the English novel.  It has elements that seem so clearly those of Dickens or Austen and even the Bronte's and yet this novel came first. And he fits it all into 224 pages!

Oliver Goldsmith was born in Ireland in 1728 and died at the age of 43.  He wrote plays, poems and this novel.  He was friends with Samuel Johnson*, who, according to Wikipedia related the following about the sale of the The Vicar of Wakefield to a publisher.

"I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion: I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill. ”  The novel was not published until 1766.

 I discovered that there are paintings of scenes from the book and so I included a few of those for fun.

*(For those who recognize the name Samuel Johnson but can't recall what he's known for, I'll help you out, since it was driving me crazy and I had to look it up myself.  "After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship."  He also annotated Shakespeare's plays and Rasselas and wrote A Journey toe the Western Islands of Scotland and what wkipedia describes as the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets. 
Here's a painting of him reading the manuscript to the Vicar of Wakefield