1767 in literature

Events

• January 29 – The former watchmaker and entrepreneur Pierre Beaumarchais has his first full-length drama, Eugénie, premièred at the Comédie-Française. Revised in two days, it establishes his reputation in this field.
• February – King George III of Great Britain requests an introduction to Samuel Johnson from his librarian, Frederick Augusta Barnard. They meet in the library of the Queen's House.
• April 24 – First professional performance of a play by an American, The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey, at the new Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia with Lewis Hallam Jr. in a leading rôle.
• December 7 – John Street Theatre, the first permanent theater in New York City, is opened by David Douglass with a performance of The Beaux' Stratagem.
• Construction of Teatro Real Coliseo de Carlos III de Aranjuez, the first enclosed theatre in Spain, begins.
• Richard Price's volume of sermons, Four Dissertations, is published by Andrew Millar and Thomas Cadell in London, and he joins the "Bowood circle", a group of liberal intellectuals around William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, at Bowood House in Wiltshire and corresponds with Benjamin Franklin.
• Publication of the Epistles and Book of Revelation in Manx as Sceeuyn Paul yn Ostyl gys ny Romanee completes the first translation of the New Testament into that language.
• Publication of the first secular prose book in any of the Sorbian languages by Jurij Mjeń.

  New books

Fiction

• James Boswell – Dorando
• Phebe Gibbes – The Woman of Fashion
• Hugh Kelly – Memoirs of a Magdalen
• Susannah Minifie – Barford Abbey
• Frances Sheridan
• *Continuation of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph
• *The History of Nourjahad
• Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman vol. ix
• Unca Eliza Winkfield – The Female American
• Arthur Young – The Adventures of Emmera

  Drama

• Pierre Beaumarchais – Eugénie
• Richard Bentley – Philodamus
• Isaac Bickerstaffe – Lace in the City
• George Colman the Elder
• *The English Merchant
• *The Oxonian in Town
• David Garrick – Cymon
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Minna von Barnhelm
• Arthur Murphy – The School for Guardians

  Poetry

• Michael Bruce – Elegy Written in Spring
• Francis Fawkes – Partridge-Shooting
• Oliver Goldsmith, ed. – The Beauties of English Poesy
• Richard Jago – Edge-Hill
• Henry Jones – Kew Garden
• Christopher Smart – The Works of Horace, Translated into Verse

  Non-fiction

• John Byrom – The Universal English Short-hand
• William Duff – An Essay on Original Genius
• Richard Farmer – An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare
• Adam Ferguson – An Essay on the History of Civil Society
• Baron d'Holbach, Paul Henry Thiry – Christianisme dévoilé
• Catharine Macaulay – Loose Remarks on Mr. Hobbes's Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society
• Moses Mendelssohn – Phädon
• Joseph Priestley – The History and Present State of Electricity
• William Warburton – Sermons and Discourses
• Arthur Young – The Farmer's Letters to the People of England

  Births

• January 1 – Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish novelist
• February 4 – Andrew Marschalk, American printer
• February 6 – Saul Ascher, German political writer and translator
• March 1 – Alexander Balfour, Scottish novelist, short-story writer and poet
• April 9 – Joseph Fiévée, French journalist, essayist, novelist and dramatist
• April 24 – Dorothy Ripley, English missionary and reformist writer
• September 6 – Thomas Bayly Howell, English legal writer
• September 8 – August Wilhelm Schlegel, German poet and translator
• September 10 – Melchiorre Gioia, Italian philosophical writer
• October 25 – Benjamin Constant, Swiss-French novelist
• November 26 – Elizabeth Bentley, English poet
• December 8 – Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, French poet and composer

  Deaths

• February 16 – David Erskine Baker, English writer on drama and translator
• February 28 – Charles Balguy, English translator and medical writer
• April 27 – Johann Gottlob Carpzov, German Biblical scholar
• July 15 – Michael Bruce, Scottish poet and hymnist
• July 26 – Paul Gottlieb Werlhof, German poet and physician
• August 21 – Thomas Osborne, English publisher and bookseller
• September 11 – Theophilus Evans, Welsh historian and cleric
• October 1 – Léon Ménard, French historical writer and lawyer
• December 22 – John Newbery, English children's author and publisher