1784 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1784.

Events

• March – Gottlieb Jakob Planck becomes professor of theology at Göttingen.^[1]
• Theatre Royal, Covent Garden
  in London by the end of the year.
• The Theatre considered as a Moral Institution), to the palatine "Deutschen Gesellschaft".^[4]
• September 1 – Germaine de Staël flees from the French Revolution to Coppet Castle in Switzerland, where she forms a salon.
• unknown date – The Didot typeface is devised and cut by Firmin Didot in Paris.

New books

Fiction

• Anonymous – Dangerous Connections (translation of Les Liaisons dangereuses)
• Robert Bage – Barham Downs
• Eliza Bromley – Laura and Augustus: an Authentic Story
• William Combe – Original Love-letters^[5]
• William Godwin
  • Damon and Delia
  • Italian Letters
• Thomas Holcroft – Tales of the Castle
• Johann Karl August Musäus – Volksmärchen der Deutschen (third volume)
• Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken – Historie van den heer Willem Leevend (1784–85)

Children

• Ellenor Fenn (anonymous, "By a Lady") – The Female Guardian. Designed to correct some of the foibles incident to girls, and supply them with innocent amusement for their hours of leisure
• Dorothy Kilner – Anecdotes of a Boarding School, or an Antidote to the Vices of Those Establishments

Drama

• George Colman the Younger – Two to One
• Hannah Cowley
  • A Bold Stroke for a Husband
  • More Ways Than One (performed 1783)
• Richard Cumberland
  • The Carmelite
  • The Natural Son
• William Hayley –
  • Lord Russell
  • The Two Connoisseurs
• Thomas Holcroft – The Follies of the Day (translation of Pierre Beaumarchais's Le Mariage de Figaro)
• Elizabeth Inchbald – Mogul Tale
• Robert Jephson – The Campaign
• Friedrich Schiller – Intrigue and Love (Kabale und Liebe)

Poetry

• Anonymous – Rolliad
• Mary Alcock – The Air Balloon
• Richard Jago – Poems
• Hannah More – The Bas Bleu, or, Conversation
• Anna Seward – Louisa
• Charlotte Turner Smith
  – Elegaic Sonnets
• Helen Maria Williams – Peru

Non-fiction

• Hannah Adams – A View of Religions
• Thomas Astle – The Origin and Progress of Writing
• George Berkeley – Works
• Edmund Burke – Speech on the East India Bill^[6]
• Thomas Chatterton – Supplement to the Miscellanies
• James Cook – A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean
• George Bubb Dodington
  – Diary
• Antoine Court de Gébelin – Le Monde primitif (publication completed)
• William Godwin – Sketches of History
• Samuel Horsley – Letters from the Archdeacon of St. Albans
• What is Enlightenment?
• William Mitford – The History of Greece
• Antoine de Rivarol – Sur l'Universalité de la langue française
• Ebenezer Sibly – A New and Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology (publication commences)
• Emanuel Swedenborg – A Hieroglyphic Key to Natural and Spiritual Arcana by Way of Representation and Correspondences (published, written in 1741).
• Michel Augustin Thouret – Recherches et doutessur le magnétisme animal
• John Wesley – The Sunday Service of the Methodists
• Arthur Young – Annals of Agriculture

Births

• January 31 – Bernard Barton, English Quaker poet (died 1849)
• February 20 – Adam Black, Scottish publisher (died 1874)
• May 12 – James Sheridan Knowles, Irish actor and dramatist (died 1862)
• May 21 – Ernst Raupach, German dramatist (died 1852)
• May 18 – William Tennant, Scottish poet (died 1848)
• August 21 – Charlotta Berger, Swedish poet and novelist (died 1852)
• September 25 – Louisa Gurney Hoare (née Louisa Gurney), English diarist and writer on education (died 1836)
• October 16 – Wilhelm Nienstädt, Prussian educator and writer (died 1862)
• October 19 – Leigh Hunt, English critic, essayist, poet (died 1859)
• November 17 – Julia Nyberg (née Svärdström), Swedish poet (died 1854)

Deaths

• January 17 – Yosa Buson, Japanese poet and painter (born 1716)
• January 30 – John Holt, American publisher (born 1721)
• April 24 – Franciszek Bohomolec, Polish dramatist, linguist, and theatrical reformer (born 1720)^[7]
• July 31 – Denis Diderot, French philosopher, art critic, and writer (born 1713)
• December 5 – Phillis Wheatley, first published African-American female poet (born 1753)
• December 13 – Samuel Johnson, English poet, critic, biographer and lexicographer (born 1709)
• unknown date – Lê Quý Đôn, Vietnamese philosopher, poet and encyclopedist (born 1726)^[8]

References