1781 in literature

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

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

Main article: 1781 in 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 – 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

References

1. Edmund Burke. (1852). "The Works and Correspondence Of...Edmund Burke". F. & J. Rivington.
2. Ainger, Alfred. (1903). "Crabbe". Macmillan.
3. Zdislav Šíma. (2001). "Astronomie a Klementinum". Národní knihovna České republiky.
4. Blamires, David. (2009). "Telling Tales: The Impact of Germany on English Children's Books 1780–1918". Open Book Publishers.
5. Thomas Bauman. (1987). "W. A. Mozart". Cambridge University Press.
6. Philip L. Astuto (2003), ''Eugenio Espejo (1747–1795), Reformador ecuatoriano de la Ilustración''. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. p. 82. {{ISBN. 9978-92-241-5.
7. (2003). "Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School". Frog Books.
8. "Manuscripts and Rare Printed Works of Hannah More (1745–1833) and her circle from the Clark Library, Los Angeles". Women, Morality And Advice Literature.
9. Allardyce Nicoll. (2009). "A History of English Drama 1660–1900: Volume III". Cambridge University Press.
10. {{Cite NIE. (1905)
11. (1986). "The Alaska diary of Adelbert von Chamisso, naturalist on the Kotzebue voyage, 1815-1818". Cook Inlet Historical Society.
12. "Utterson, Sarah Elizabeth, 1781-1851". [[Library of Congress]].
13. Linda J. Turzynski, "Lucy Aikin." ''Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Children's Writers, 1800–1880''. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc, 1996
14. (1954). "Andrés Bello (1781-1865), National Hero". The Hispanic American Historical Review.
15. [[Karl Goedeke]]. (1875). "Ahlefeldt, Charlotte von".
16. Yasukata, Toshimasa. (2002). "Lessing's philosophy of religion and the German enlightenment: Lessing on Christianity and reason". Oxford University Press.
17. Lauritz Nielsen. "A. H. Godiche". Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, Gyldendal.
18. {{EB1911
19. "Johannes Ewald".
20. (1968). "Antiquities in Leicestershire". Kraus Reprint Company.
21. Klemme, Heiner. (2016). "The Bloomsbury dictionary of eighteenth-century German philosophers". Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
22. {{EB1911