Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
March 1 (Saint David's Day) – Welsh ship's surgeon David Samwell, onboard HMS Resolution in the Pacific Ocean on the second voyage of James Cook, writes a penillion.
Thomas Chatterton, Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth Century, published anonymously, edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt; published February 8 (see also Tyrwhitt, A Vindication 1782)
William Combe:
The Diaboliad, published anonymously, misdated "1677"; directed at Simon, Lord Irnham
The First of April; or, The Triumphs of Folly
Thomas Day, The Desolation of America, published anonymously
William Dodd, Thoughts in Prison
William Roscoe, Mount Pleasant, published anonymously
Thomas Warton, the younger, Poems: A new edition
Paul Whitehead, Poems and Miscellaneous Compositions
Anonymous, Song: made on the taking of General Burgoyne, a broadside of 21 four-line verses, published with no information on the place or printer
Anonymous ("H. I."), Faction: a sketch; or, a summary of the causes of the present most unnatural and indefensible of all rebellion's (sic), "Written at New-York, February, 1776", published this year in New York, 8 pages
Thomas Dawes, The Law Given at Sinai
Francis Hopkinson, "Camp Ballad"
Solomon Gessner, works, German-language, Switzerland; in two volumes, published this year and in 1777
Pierre Le Tourneur, Poésies galliques, translation into French from the original English of James Macpherson's Ossian poems
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 27 – Lukijan Mušicki (died 1837), Serbian poet, prose writer and polyglot
March 14 – John Blair Linn (died 1804), American
July 27 – Thomas Campbell (died 1844), Scottish poet especially of sentimental poetry dealing with human affairs
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 30 – Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae (born 1726), German writer, translator, editor and composer
February 3 – Hugh Kelly (born 1739), Irish poet and dramatist
March 2 – Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford (born 1717), English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician
August 26 – Francis Fawkes (born 1720), English poet and translator
September 24 (bur.) – James Fortescue (born 1716), English
October 12 (October 1 O.S.) – Alexander Sumarokov (born 1717), Russian poet and dramatist
December 12 – Albrecht von Haller (born 1708), German
Christoph Friedrich Wedekind (born 1709), German
Johann Gottlieb Willamov (born 1736), German
