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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1781.

Events

  • March 27 – George Crabbe writes to Edmund Burke, enclosing examples of his work. The outcome is the publication of Crabbe's poem The Library.
  • August 5 – Antonín Strnad completes an inventory of the contents of the Clementinum in Prague, which becomes a national library.
  • unknown date – Rudolf Erich Raspe (anonymously) publishes "M-h-s-nsche Geschichten" ("M-h-s-n Stories") in the Berlin humor magazine Vade mecum für lustige Leute ("Handbook for Fun-loving People"), the first appearance of Baron Munchausen in fiction.

New books

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Fiction

  • Robert Bage – Mount Henneth
  • Christoph Friedrich Bretzner – Belmont und Constanze
  • William Combe – Letters of an Italian Nun and an English Gentleman
  • Eugenio Espejo – La ciencia blancardina
  • Benjamin Franklin – A Letter To A Royal Academy
  • Charles Johnstone – The History of John Juniper
  • Henry Mackenzie – Julia de Roubignei
  • Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne – La Découverte Australe par un Homme-Volant
  • Glocester Ridley – Melanpus
  • Anna Seward – Monody on Major André

Children

  • Mrs. Barbauld – Hymns in Prose for Children
  • Joachim Heinrich Campe – Die Entdeckung von Amerika (Discovery of America)

Drama

  • Miles Peter Andrews – Dissipation
  • Frances Brooke – The Siege of Sinope
  • Hannah Cowley – The World as it Goes
  • Elizabeth Craven – The Miniature Picture
  • John Delap – The Royal Suppliants
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Iphigenia in Tauris (revised version)
  • Thomas Holcroft – Duplicity
  • Elizabeth Inchbald – Polygamy
  • Robert Jephson – The Count of Narbonne
  • John O'Keeffe – The Agreeable Surprise
  • Samuel Jackson Pratt – The Fair Circassian
  • Friedrich Schiller – The Robbers (Die Räuber, published)
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
  • The Critic (published)
  • A Trip to Scarborough

Poetry

  • William Cowper – Anti-Thelyphthora
  • George Crabbe – The Library
  • Maria De Fleury – Poems, Occasioned by the Confinement and Acquittal of the Right Honourable Lord George Gordon, President of the Protestant Association
  • Santa Rita Durão – Caramuru
  • Anne Francis – A Poetical Translation of the Song of Solomon
  • Philip Freneau – The British Prison-Ship
  • William Hayley – The Triumphs of Temper
  • George Keate – Works
  • Samuel Jackson Pratt – Sympathy

Non-fiction

  • Maria De Fleury – Unrighteous Abuse Detected and Chastised
  • Mary Deverell – Sermons on the Following Subjects...
  • Edward Gibbon – Volumes II and III of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  • Henry Home – Loose Hints Upon Education
  • Samuel Johnson
  • The Beauties of Johnson
  • Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
  • Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason
  • John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in Italy
  • John Newton – Cardiphonia
  • John Nichols – Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth
  • Magister Pianco (Hans Heinrich von Ecker und Eckhoffen) – Der Rosenkreutzer in seiner Blösse
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Essai sur l'origine des langues

Births

  • January 26 – Ludwig Achim von Arnim, German poet and novelist (died 1831)
  • January 30 – Adelbert von Chamisso, German poet and botanist (died 1838)
  • February 26 – Peter Andresen Oelrichs, Heligoland-born lexicographer (died 1869)
  • March 17 – Ebenezer Elliott, English poet (died 1849)
  • May 14 – Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer, German historian (died 1873)
  • June 12 (probable) – Christian Isobel Johnstone, Scottish journalist and novelist (died 1857)
  • November 3 – Sarah Elizabeth Utterson, English translator and short story writer (died 1851)
  • November 6 – Lucy Aikin (Mary Godolphin), English historical writer (died 1864)
  • November 29 – Andrés Bello, Venezuelan polymath (died 1865)
  • December 6 – Charlotte von Ahlefeld, German novelist (died 1849)
  • December 11 – David Brewster, Scottish scientist and writer (died 1868)

Deaths

  • February 15 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German philosopher and dramatist (born 1729)
  • February 22 – Anna Magdalena Godiche, Danish book printer and publisher (born 1721)
  • February 24 – Edward Capell, English Shakespeare scholar (born 1713)
  • March 1 – Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, French historian, classicist and lexicographer (born 1697)
  • March 17 – Johannes Ewald, Danish dramatist and poet (born 1743)
  • May 8 – Richard Jago, English poet and cleric (born 1715)
  • June 24 – Anna Miller, English poet and salon hostess (born 1741)
  • September 11 &ndash; Johann August Ernesti, German theologian and philologist (born 1707)
  • November 2 – José Francisco de Isla, Spanish satirist (born 1703)
  • November 4 – Johann Nikolaus Götz, German poet (born 1721)
  • December 7 – Judith Madan, English poet (born 1702)

References