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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1783.

Events

  • April 14 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's drama Nathan der Weise receives its first professional performance, in Berlin.
  • May 6 – William Cobbett arrives in London to work, and later in the year joins the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot.
  • September – Friedrich Schiller, having left Stuttgart for Weimar to avoid persecution, becomes resident dramatist at Mannheim.
  • November 18 – August von Kotzebue leaves St Petersburg to take up a position with the high court of appeal in Reval, then subject to the Russian Empire.

New books

Fiction

  • Jozef Ignác Bajza – René
  • Rhijnvis Feith – Julia
  • Thomas Holcroft – The Family Picture
  • Sophia Lee – The Recess
  • Johann Karl August Musäus – Volksmärchen der Deutschen (second volume)
  • Clara Reeve – The Two Mentors

Children

  • Thomas Day (anonymously) – The History of Sandford and Merton (first of three story books)
  • Ellenor Fenn (as Mrs. Teachwell) – Cobwebs to Catch Flies
  • Dorothy Kilner (as M. P.) – The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse
  • Mary Ann Kilner
  • A Course of Lectures for Sunday Evenings. Containing religious advice to young persons
  • (as S. S.) The Adventures of a Pincushion

Drama

  • Vittorio Alfieri – Agamennone
  • Frances Brooke – Roxina
  • Hannah Cowley – Which is the Man?
  • Richard Cumberland – The Mysterious Husband
  • John O'Keeffe – The Poor Soldier
  • William Jackson – The Metamorphosis
  • Samuel Jackson Pratt – The School for Vanity

Poetry

  • Lady Anne Barnard – Auld Robin Gray (ballad) (published anonymously)
  • William Blake – Poetical Sketches
  • Judith Cowper – The Progress of Poetry
  • George Crabbe – The Village
  • Joseph Ritson – A Select Collection of English Songs
  • John Wolcot (as Peter Pindar) – More Lyric Odes, to the Royal Academicians

:See also 1783 in poetry

Non-fiction

  • James Beattie – Dissertations Moral and Critical
  • William Beckford – Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents
  • Hugh Blair – Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
  • Edmund Burke – Letter on the Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics
  • Adam Ferguson – History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic
  • William Godwin – Life of Lord Chatham
  • Immanuel Kant – Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science
  • Vicesimus Knox – Elegant Extracts
  • Mémoires secrets (anonymous)
  • Moses Mendelssohn – Jerusalem
  • Ezra Stiles – The United States elevated to Glory and Honor
  • Horace-Bénédict de Saussure – Essai sur l'hygrométrie

Births

  • January 23 – Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), French novelist (died 1842)
  • April 3 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist and politician (died 1859)
  • May 14 – Samuel Lee, English orientalist and linguist (died 1852)
  • September 23 – Jane Taylor, English poet and novelist (died 1824)
  • December 10 – María Bibiana Benítez, Puerto Rican poet and playwright (died c. 1873)

Deaths

  • January 2 – Johann Jakob Bodmer, Swiss journalist and critic writing in German (born 1698)
  • April 17 – Louise d'Epinay French writer and salon hostess (born 1726)
  • September 6 – Anna Williams, Welsh-born poet (born 1706)
  • October 10 – Henry Brooke, Irish novelist, playwright, and poet (born 1703)
  • October 29 – Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician and philosopher (born 1717)
  • November 3 – Charles Collé, French dramatist and songwriter (born 1709)
  • November 23 – Ann Eliza Bleecker, American poet, novelist and letter writer (born 1752)

References