1756 in literature

Events

• January – Tobias Smollett becomes the first editor of The Critical Review.
• April-May – Beginning of the Seven Years' War in Europe.
• June 20 – The Black Hole of Calcutta incident inspires renewed British efforts in India.
• October 29 – Frances Abington first acts with the company of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.
• November – Gilbert White becomes curate at his birthplace of Selborne in Hampshire, England, for the second time.
• December 14 – Rev. John Home's blank verse tragedy Douglas is performed for the first time, in Edinburgh, with considerable success, in spite of the opposition of the local church presbytery, who summon Rev. Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended its representation. However, it fails in its early promise to set up a new Scottish dramatic tradition.

  New books

Fiction

• Anonymous – The Life and Memoirs of Mr. Ephraim Tristram Bates
• Thomas Amory – Life of John Buncle
• Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont – "La Belle et la Bête"
• Charlotte Lennox – The Memoirs of the Countess of Berci
• Samuel Richardson – The Paths of Virtue Delineated, children's versions of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison

  Poetry

• Isaac Bickerstaffe – Leucothoe
• Richard Owen Cambridge – An Elegy Written in an Empty Assembly Room
• Thomas Cole – The Arbour
• William Kenrick – Epistles to Lorenzo
• William Mason – Odes
• Christopher Pitt – Poems
• Christopher Smart
• *Hymn to the Supreme Being
• *The Works of Horace

  Drama

• Frances Brooke – Virginia
• John Brown – Athelstane
• Samuel Foote
• *The Englishman Return'd from Paris
• *The Green-Room Squabble or a Battle Royal between the Queen of Babylon and the Daughter of Darius
• David Garrick
• *Catherine and Petruchio
• *The Tempest
• Carlo Goldoni – Il campiello
• John Home – Douglas

  Non-fiction

• Corporate authorship – The Literary Magazine
• Thomas Birch – The History of the Royal Society of London vol. i
• William Blackstone – An Analysis of the Laws of England
• Edmund Burke – A Vindication of Natural Society
• Alban Butler – The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints
• Theophilus Cibber – Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects
• Daniel Fenning – The Universal Spelling Book, or, A New and Easy Guide to the English Language
• José Francisco de Isla – Triunfo del amor y de la lealtad o Día Grande de Navarra
• Johann Matthias Gesner – Primæ lineæ isagoges in eruditionem universalem
• James Grieve – translation of A. Cornelius Celsus of Medicine
• Eliza Haywood
• *as "Mira" – The Wife
• *posthumously – The Husband: in Answer to The Wife
• David Hume – The History of Great Britain vol. ii
• Leopold Mozart – Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule
• Alexander Russell – The Natural History of Aleppo
• Tobias Smollett
• *A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages
• * The Critical Review
• Voltaire – Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations
• Joseph Warton – An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope
• John Wesley – An Address to the Clergy

  Births

• March 3 – William Godwin, English writer
• April – William Gifford, English satirist
• June 13 – Edmund Lodge, English biographer and writer on heraldry
• July 13 – Thomas Rowlandson, English caricaturist
• July 25 – Elizabeth Hamilton, Irish-born Scottish essayist, poet and novelist
• September 15 – Karl Philipp Moritz, German essayist and travel writer
• November 2 – Pierre Laromiguière, French philosopher
• November 18 – Thomas Burgess, English philosopher and bishop

  Deaths

• February 25 – Eliza Haywood, English writer and actress
• March 26 – Gilbert West, English poet
• March 30 to April 2 – Stephen Duck, English poet
• December 29 – Thomas Cooke, English translator, dramatist and critic
• Unknown date – Benjamin Elbel, German theologian