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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1758.

Events

  • April 15 – Samuel Johnson begins publishing a series of essays, The Idler (1758–1760), in the Universal Chronicle.
  • April 24 – Robert Dodsley and his brother James sign a contract with Edmund Burke to launch The Annual Register.
  • April 27 – The French historian Jean-François Marmontel enters the service of Madame de Pompadour.
  • July/August – The poet and children's writer Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her family move to Warrington in north-west England.
  • October – Voltaire buys an estate at Ferney in eastern France.
  • unknown date – The French mathematician and philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis moves to his final home in Basel, Switzerland.

New books

Fiction

  • Charlotte Lennox – Henrietta
  • Madame (Riccoboni) – Histoire du marquis de Cressy
  • Horace Walpole – A Dialogue Between Two Great Ladies

Drama

  • John Cleland – Tombo-Chiqui, or, The American Savage (not produced)
  • Denis Diderot – Le Père de famille
  • Robert Dodsley – Cleone
  • David Garrick – Florizel and Perdita
  • John Home – Aegis
  • Charlotte Lennox – Philander
  • Arthur Murphy – The Upholsterer
  • George Alexander Stevens – Albion Restored

Poetry

  • Mark Akenside – An Ode to the Country Gentlemen
  • Anica Bošković – Dijalog
  • John Gilbert Cooper – The Call of Aristippus
  • Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim – Preussische Kriegslieder von einem Grenadier (Prussian War Songs of a Grenadier)
  • Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas
  • James Macpherson – The Highlander
  • Heyat Mahmud – Āmbiyābāṇī; Bengali
  • Thomas Parnell – Posthumous Works

Non-fiction

  • John Armstrong as Launcelot Temple – Sketches, or, Essays on Various Subjects
  • William Blackstone – A Discourse on the Study of Law
  • Rev. Dr. John Brown – An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (2nd volume)
  • Andrés Marcos Burriel – Paleografía española
  • Elizabeth Carter (translator) – All the Works of Epictetus Which Are Now Extant
  • José Francisco de Isla – Historia del famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes
  • Benjamin Franklin – Father Abraham's Sermon
  • Oliver Goldsmith as "James Willington" – The Memoirs of a Protestant
  • William Hawkins – Tracts in Divinity
  • Claude Adrien Helvétius – De l'Esprit
  • Henry Home – Historical Law-Tracts
  • Carl Linnaeus – Systema Naturae (10th edition), Tomus I, Animalia
  • Robert Lowth – The Life of William of Wykeham
  • Thomas Marryat – Therapeutics, or a New Practice of Physic (original version, in Latin)
  • Antoine-Joseph Pernety
  • Dictionnaire mytho-hermétique, dans lequel on trouve les allégories fabuleuses des poètes, les métaphores, les énigmes et les termes barbares des philosophes hermétiques expliqués
  • Les Fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées et réduites au même principe, avec une explication des hiéroglyphes et de la guerre de Troye
  • Antoine Simon Le Page Du Pratz – Histoire de la Louisiane (History of Louisiana)
  • Richard Price – A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals
  • Emanuel Swedenborg
  • Earths in the Universe
  • Heaven and Hell
  • New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine
  • The Last Judgement
  • Jonathan Swift – The History of the Last Four Years of the Queen
  • Horace Walpole
  • A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England
  • Fugitive Pieces
  • Arthur Young – The Theatre of the Present War in North America

Births

  • January 12 – Dmitry Gorchakov, Russian writer, dramatist and poet (died 1824)
  • February 3
  • Vasily Kapnist, Ukrainian poet and playwright (died 1823)
  • Valentin Vodnik, Carniolan Slovene poet, writer and priest (died 1819)
  • February 10 – Amalia Holst, German writer, intellectual, and feminist (died 1829)
  • March 15 – Magdalene Sophie Buchholm, Norwegian poet (died 1826)
  • April 30 – Jane West (Prudentia Homespun), English novelist and writer of conduct books (died 1852)
  • October 16 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (died 1843)
  • December 9 – Richard Colt Hoare, English antiquary, archeologist and traveler (died 1838)

Deaths

  • January 7 – Allan Ramsay the Elder, Scottish poet (born 1686)
  • March 22 – Jonathan Edwards, American theologian and preacher (born 1703)
  • October – Theophilus Cibber, English dramatist and actor (born 1703; lost at sea)
  • October 27 bur. – Elizabeth Blackwell, Scottish botanic writer and illustrator (born 1707)
  • December 25 – James Hervey, English religious writer and cleric (born 1714)

References