1766 in literature
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1766.
Events
- Early – The young Fanny Burney pays one of many visits to Samuel Crisp, a frustrated author and friend of her father living in retirement at Chessington Hall, England.[1]
- Georgian Theatre (Stockton-on-Tees) opens as a playhouse.[2]
- Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbevilleand for other acts of sacrilege, including desecration of a crucifix.
- December 2 – The Law on the Freedom of Printing abolishes censorship in Sweden and guarantees freedom of the press.
- unknown dates
- The Drottningholm Palace Theatre is reopened as an opera house in Stockholm, Sweden, in its surviving form, designed by Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz.
- Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg begins to publish his Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Litteratur, in which he formulates the literary principles of Sturm und Drang.
New books
Fiction
- Henry Brooke – The Fool of Quality
- Oliver Goldsmith – The Vicar of Wakefield
- Catherine Jemmat – Miscellanies
- Charlotte Lennox – The History of Eliza
- Susannah Minifie– The Picture
- Sarah Scott – The History of Sir George Ellison
- Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio(聊齋誌異, Liaozhai Zhiyi; first surviving printed edition)
- Christoph Martin Wieland – Geschichte des Agathon
- Anna Williams – Miscellanies in Prose and Verse
Drama
- George Colman the Elder and David Garrick – The Clandestine Marriage
- Ramón de la Cruz – La pradera de San Isidro
- Thomas Francklin – The Earl of Warrick
- Elizabeth Griffith – The Double Mistake
Poetry
- Mark Akenside – An Ode to the Late Thomas Edwards
- Christopher Anstey – The New Bath Guide
- James Beattie– Poems
- John Cunningham – Poems
- John Freeth – The Political Songster
- Oliver Goldsmith, ed. – Poems for Young Ladies
- Charles Jenner – Poems
- Henry James Pye – Beauty
- Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg – Gedicht eines Skalden
Non-fiction
- Francis Blackburne– The Confessional (theology of confession)
- Edmund Burke – A Short Account of a Late Short Administration
- Denis Diderot – Essais sur la peinture
- James Fordyce – Sermons to Young Women
- Immanuel Kant – Dreams of a Spirit-Seer
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Laocoön
- Franz Mesmer – De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum (On the Influence of the Planets on the Human Body)
- Thomas Pennant – The British Zoology
- Pedro Rodríguez Mohedano and Rafael Rodríguez Mohedano – Historia literaria de España, desde su primera población hasta nuestros días (Literary history of Spain, from the first publication to the present day)
- Samuel Sharp – Letters from Italy
- Travels through France and Italy
- Laurence Sterne – The Sermons of Mr Yorick vols. iii-iv
- George Stevens (editor) – Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare
- Thomas Tyrwhitt – Observations and Conjectures Upon Some Passages of Shakespeare
- John Wesley – A Plain Account of Christian Perfection
Births
- January 15 – Nathan Drake, English essayist and physician (died 1836)
- February 1 – Eliza Fenwick, English novelist and children's writer (died 1840)
- February 14 – Thomas Robert Malthus, English political scientist (died 1834)[3]
- April 22 – Germaine de Staël (Anne Louise Germaine Necker), French novelist and saloniste (died 1817)[4]
- May 11 – Isaac D'Israeli, English literary scholar (died 1848)[5]
- August 16 – Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne, Scottish songwriter and collector (died 1845).
- October 11 – Nólsoyar Páll, Faroese merchant and poet (lost at sea c. 1808)
Deaths
- March 3 – William Rufus Chetwood, Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist and publisher (year of birth unknown)
- March 21 – Richard Dawes, English classicist (born 1708)
- December 12 - Johann Christoph Gottsched, German philosopher (born 1700)[6]