Rahul Sharma (Editor)

1787 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1787.

Contents

Events

  • January 15 – Ann Ward marries William Radcliffe, gaining the surname under which she will become known as a writer of Gothic novels.
  • April 16 – Royall Tyler's The Contrast becomes the first comedy written by an American citizen to be professionally produced, at the John Street Theatre (Manhattan).
  • April 17 – The Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is published by William Creech including a portrait of Burns by Alexander Nasmyth. The poet has great social success in the city's literary circles; 16-year-old Walter Scott meets him at the house of Adam Ferguson.
  • June 27 – Just before midnight, Edward Gibbon completes the writing of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the small summerhouse in his garden in Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • November 21 – François-Joseph Talma makes his professional stage debut at the Comédie-Française as Seide in Voltaire's Mahomet.
  • December 4 – Robert Burns meets Agnes Maclehose at a party given by Miss Erskine Nimmo.
  • King George III of Great Britain issues a Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice which can be used to prosecute obscene publications.
  • Friedrich Schiller arrives in Weimar.

    • Fiction

  • Elizabeth Bonhôte – Olivia, or, The Deserted Bride
  • Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai – Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Sorrows of Young Werther (revised edition)
  • Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse – Ardinghello and die glückseligen Inseln
  • Elizabeth Helme – Louisa; or the Cottage on the Moor
  • Bernardin de Saint-Pierre – Paul et Virginie
  • Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken – Abraham Blankaart

    • Children

  • François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Fanfan et Lolotte, ou Histoire de deux enfants abandonnés dans une île déserte (Fanfan and Lolotte, Story of Two Children Abandoned on a Desert Island)

    • Drama

  • Pierre Beaumarchais – Tarare (opera)
  • George Colman the Younger – Inkle and Yarico (comic opera)
  • Friedrich Schiller – Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien
  • Royall Tyler – The Contrast

    • Non-fiction

  • Thomas Best – A Concise Treatise on the Art of Angling
  • Mathurin Jacques Brisson – Pesanteur Spécifique des Corps
  • Ottobah Cugoano – Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species
  • (Sir) John Fenn (ed.) – The Paston Letters (Original letters, written during the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III)
  • John Hawkins – Life of Samuel Johnson
  • Scots Musical Museum, vol. 1
  • Mary Wollstonecraft – Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

    • Births

  • April 26 – Ludwig Uhland, German poet (died 1862)
  • September 13 – John Adamson, English antiquary and expert on Portuguese (died 1855)
  • November 4 – Edmund Kean, English actor (died 1833)
  • November 21 – Bryan Procter (Barry Cornwall), English poet (died 1874)
  • December 16 – Mary Russell Mitford, English novelist (died 1855)

    • Deaths

  • April 2 – Francisco Javier Clavijero, Mexican-born historian (born 1731)
  • June 19 – John Brown, Scottish theologian (born 1722)
  • October 28 – Johann Karl August Musäus, German satirist and children's writer (born 1735)
  • October 30 – Ferdinando Galiani, Italian economist (born 1728)
  • November 3 – Robert Lowth, English poet, grammarian and bishop (born 1710)
  • December 19 – Soame Jenyns, English poet and essayist (born 1704)

    • References

    1787 in literature Wikipedia
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