Harman Patil (Editor)

1785 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1785.

Contents

Events

  • January 1
  • First publication of the Daily Universal Register (later The Times) in London.
  • Parisian theatre company Théâtre des Variétés-Amusantes moves into a temporary new theatre in the gardens of the Palais-Royal.
  • February 2 – Sarah Siddons makes her London debut in her most famous rôle, Lady Macbeth, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
  • February – Mary Bowes escapes from her husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney, and begins divorce proceedings.
  • April 14 – Death of English poet William Whitehead in London. Thomas Warton succeeds him as Poet Laureate of Great Britain after the refusal of William Mason.
  • May 22 – Robert Burns' first child, Elizabeth ("Dear-bought Bess"), is born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton.
  • June 23 – The Litvak rabbi and writer Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg dies at Metz in France after a book-case topples on him, according to tradition.
  • November 28 – The Marquis de Sade completes writing The 120 Days of Sodom (Les 120 journées de Sodome) while imprisoned in the Bastille; it will not be published until 1904.
  • Giacomo Casanova is appointed librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein at the Duchcov Chateau in Bohemia.
  • New building for the Prussian Royal Library completed in Berlin.

    • Fiction

  • Anna Maria Bennett – Anna
  • Elizabeth Blower – Maria
  • Denis Diderot, part trans. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Jacques the Fatalist (Jacques der Fatalist und sein Herr)
  • Richard Graves – Eugenius
  • Karl Philipp Moritz – Anton Reiser (to 1790)

    • Children

  • Rudolf Erich Raspe, anonymously – Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia

    • Drama

  • George Colman the Younger – Two to One
  • Richard Cumberland – The Natural Son
  • Elizabeth Inchbald – Appearance Is Against Them
  • John O'Keefe – The Poor Soldier

    • Poetry

  • János Bacsanyi – The Valour of the Magyars
  • Samuel Egerton Brydges – Sonnets and other Poems
  • Robert Burns – "To a Mouse"
  • William Combe – The Royal Dream
  • William Cowper – The Task
  • George Crabbe – The News-Paper
  • William Hayley – A Philosophical, Historical and Moral Essay on Old Maids
  • Samuel Johnson – The Poetical Works
  • Edward Lovibond – Poems
  • Friedrich Schiller – Ode to Joy (An die Freude)
  • Charles Wilkins (trans.) – Bhagvat-geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon
  • John Wolcot as "Peter Pindar"
  • The Lousiad
  • Lyric Odes, for the Year 1785
  • Ann Yearsley – Poems

    • Non-fiction

  • James Boswell – The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
  • Edmund Burke – Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts
  • Francis Grose – A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
  • Samuel Johnson – Prayers and Meditations
  • Immanuel Kant – Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
  • William Paley – The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy
  • Clara Reeve – The Progress of Romance
  • Thomas Reid – Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
  • John Scott – Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English Poets

    • Births

  • January 4 – Jakob Grimm, German philologist, jurist and mythologist (died 1863)
  • January 31 – Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová, Czech cookery writer (died 1845)
  • March 3 – Frances Mary Richardson Currer, English heiress and bibliophile (died 1861)
  • March 7 – Alessandro Manzoni, Italian poet and novelist (died 1873)
  • March 18 – He Changling (賀長齡), Chinese scholar and writer on governance (died 1848)
  • March 21 – Henry Kirke White, English poet (died 1806)
  • April 4 – Bettina von Arnim, German novelist (died 1859)
  • April 7 – Lorenzo Hammarsköld, Swedish poet and author (died 1827)
  • May 3 – Vicente López y Planes, Argentine politician and writer (died 1856)
  • May 18 – John Wilson (Christopher North), Scottish writer (died 1854)
  • August 15 – Thomas De Quincey, English essayist (died 1859)
  • October 18 – Thomas Love Peacock, English novelist, poet and East India Company official (died 1866)
  • October 30 – Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau – German travel and gardening writer (died 1871)

    • Deaths

  • January 19 – Jonathan Toup, English classicist, critic and cleric (born 1713)
  • April 14 – William Whitehead, English poet laureate (born 1715)
  • May 4 – János Sajnovics, Hungarian linguist (born 1733)
  • August 31 – Pietro Chiari, Italian playwright, novelist and librettist (born 1712)
  • September 17 – Antoine Léonard Thomas, French poet and critic (born 1732)
  • November 12 – Richard Burn, English legal writer (born 1709)
  • November 25 – Richard Glover, English poet and politician (born 1712)
  • December 6 – Kitty Clive, English actress and writer of farce (born 1711)
  • December 18 – Joseph Allegranza, Milanese historian (born 1715)
  • December 29 – Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian-born Danish poet and satirist (born 1742)
  • Unknown date – Ali Haider Multani, Punjabi Sufi poet (born 1690)

    • References

    1785 in literature Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA