Although the literature of Oliver Goldsmith represents some of the most famous and best-loved works of the eighteenth century, an enduring and frustrating challenge for scholars studying this author is the paucity of reliable information available about him. In her book Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street, Norma Clarke repeatedly draws attention to this difficulty and remarks on the resulting lack of critical work on this writer. Her solution is to provide greater understanding of the lesser-known Grub Street authors who knew and influenced Goldsmith and his writing. Many of these “brothers of the quill” also were Irish, and Clarke's book is particularly valuable because it often brings to the forefront Goldsmith's conflicted status as an Irish writer in England who frequently assumes a quintessentially “English” authorial voice or persona even as he freely critiques England's imperial and economic policies. Within this context, Clarke illuminates the class paradoxes of these men's struggles to forge their authorial identities in an era when writers must appear to have money without seeming to pursue it. She makes clear that the goal is to be regarded as a man of taste possessing respectable independence rather than as a Grub Street hack, a slave to the booksellers who writes merely for money. At a time when authorial support through both patronage and subscription became increasingly problematic, Goldsmith advocated independence from these older systems, instead gaining wealth and status through negotiations with booksellers. Nevertheless, he fell deeply in debt while trying to uphold this necessary appearance of independent wealth and success.

Exploring other Grub Street writers in relation to Goldsmith, Clarke employs a broadly chronological approach, organizing her text into twelve chapters in two parts. She notes that the linking figure in part one is the bookseller, Ralph Griffiths, while in part two she more fully examines the possibilities of independence and patronage. Clarke discusses the era's Irish stereotypes and highlights the quality of being good natured as a facet of Irish identity that Goldsmith particularly tried to adopt or project about himself. Another Irishman and Grub Street author who Clarke describes as excelling at making Goldsmith laugh and at taking his money was John Pilkington. Pilkington was the son of the well-known poet, Laetitia Pilkington. He wrote a touching account of his mother's last days and a tell-all narrative of his own difficulties and adventures growing up in Ireland, placing focus on Irish kindness and hospitality despite ill treatment from many of his family members. Clarke explains that Pilkington's friendship and texts provided Goldsmith with material he incorporated into his “Chinese Letters” (1760–61), The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and other writings. Pilkington and Paul Hiffernan, an Irish Grub Street writer who wrote supportively of Ireland, each developed reputations for soliciting subscriptions for fake books and living off these acquired funds. In general, this practice became associated with Irish writers and Goldsmith sought to distance himself from such behavior. Clarke displays that Goldsmith's The Life of Richard Nash (1762) was indebted to his friendship with another Irish writer of questionable reputation, Samuel Derrick. In libertine fashion, Derrick dominated the Covent Garden sex trade, for which he recruited women from Dublin and annually produced and updated the infamous Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (1757–1795), which in titillating detail described and advertised these women and their services. After Nash's death, Derrick succeeded him as the “King of Bath.”

Clarke relates Goldsmith's experience of eighteenth-century London, providing useful background information about the city at this time. She also seizes chances to gesture toward Goldsmith's interactions with his better-known friends and acquaintances, such as Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, and Tobias Smollett. Recounting Goldsmith's failures in his youth to become a clergyman, tutor, or lawyer, and his subsequent enjoyment of studying and practicing medicine, which he continued while launching his writing career, Clarke also notes his possible jealousy of another doctor-poet, James Grainger. Analyzing Grainger's The Sugar-Cane (1764), particularly in connection with slavery in the West Indies, allows Clarke to comment on Goldsmith's own thoughts about empire, originality, and travel. She credits Goldsmith's poem The Traveller (1764) with catapulting him into celebrity status as an author, and it was this text that attracted perhaps the most surprising of Goldsmith's acquaintances explored in Brothers of the Quill, the Irish Robert Nugent, MP for Bristol (1754–1774). This relationship proves surprising because Clarke describes Nugent as Goldsmith's patron, remarking that most of Goldsmith's biographers say little about Nugent, perhaps from embarrassment, considering Goldsmith's outspokenness against patronage. Clarke examines Nugent's supposedly scandalous treatment of his illegitimate son and describes Nugent as a man of pleasure who became rich through marriage, possessed ambitions as a poet, and sought political means to improve both Ireland and England. While Clarke admits that we know almost nothing about the relationship between Nugent and Goldsmith, she suggests that the former's influence can be seen in works such as The Deserted Village (1770) and The Vicar of Wakefield.

Although Clarke states that Goldsmith scholars are right to be wary of the many anecdotes about this author that have been passed down, embellished, distorted, and otherwise altered over the centuries, she nevertheless agrees with finding much autobiographical meaning in Goldsmith's works. In addition to Goldsmith enthusiasts, Brothers of the Quill will appeal to anyone interested in ways in which economy (and debt and imprisonment), national and political policy, class, and ideas of originality helped to shape concepts of authorial identity in this era. In particular, the study provides a broader understanding of writers affiliated with Grub Street and their various approaches to achieving financial success in their daily struggles for celebrity and survival.