1773 in literature

Events

• March 15 – Oliver Goldsmith's comedy She Stoops to Conquer is performed for the first time, at the Covent Garden Theatre in London.
• April 13 – Richard Brinsley Sheridan marries singer and actress Elizabeth Ann Linley.
• May 1 – Richard Wroughton takes the role of Prince Henry in Henry II, King of England by John Bancroft at Covent Garden.
• May 4 – Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill composes the keen Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire over the body of her husband Art Ó Laoghaire.
• August 6 – Samuel Johnson sets out for Scotland, where on August 14 he meets James Boswell in Edinburgh for their tour to the Hebrides.

• Cláudio Manuel da Costa writes his epic poem Vila Rica, relating the history of the homonymous Brazilian city, modern-day Ouro Preto; it is not published until 1839.
• Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock publishes the last five cantos of his epic poem Der Messias in Hamburg.
• Christoph Martin Wieland begins publishing the influential literary monthly Der Teutsche Merkur in Weimar.
• Compilation of the Siku Quanshu begins in Qing Dynasty China. The Wenjin Chamber is built at the Chengde Mountain Resort to accommodate a copy.

  New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Bonhote – The Fashionable Friend
• :es:Calixto Bustamante Carlos|Calixto Bustamante Carlos – Lazarillo de ciegos caminantes
• José Cadalso – Cartas marruecas
• Mrs Fogerty – The Fatal Connexion
• Richard Graves – The Spiritual Quixote
• Henry Mackenzie – The Man of the World
• Johann Karl Wezel – Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts, des Weisen, sonst der Stammler genannt: aus Familiennachrichten gesammelt

  Drama

• Charles Dibdin – The Deserter
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Götz von Berlichingen
• Oliver Goldsmith – She Stoops to Conquer
• Thomas Hawkins – The Origin of the English Drama
• John Home – Alonzo
• William Kenrick – The Duellist
• Henry Mackenzie – The Prince of Tunis
• Arthur Murphy – Alzuma
• Mercy Otis Warren – The Adulateur
• George Stevens – The Plays of William Shakespeare

  Poetry

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld – Poems
• John Bicknell and Thomas Day – The Dying Negro
• Robert Fergusson
• *Poems
• *Auld Reikie
• Richard Graves – The Love of Order
• Edward Jerningham – Faldoni and Teresa
• George Keate – The Monument in Arcadia
• James Macpherson – The Iliad
• Hannah More – A Search After Happiness
• Thomas Scott – Lyric Poems
• Phillis Wheatley – Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
• John Wolcot – Persian Love Elegies
• José Cadalso – Ocios de mi juventud

  Non-fiction

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld and John Aikin – Miscellaneous Pieces
• Patrick Brydone – A Tour Through Sicily and Malta
• James Burnett, Lord Monboddo – Of the Origin and Progress of Language
• Charles Burney – The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces
• José Cadalso – Apuntaciones autobiográficas
• Hester Chapone – Letters on the Improvement of the Mind
• David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes – Remarks on the History of Scotland
• Antoine Court de Gébelin – Le Monde primitif
• John Hawkesworth – An Account of the Voyages for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere
• Thomas Hawkins – The Origin of the English Drama
• Tomás de Iriarte – Los literatos en Cuaresm`
• Thomas Leland – The History of Ireland, from the invasion of Henry II
• William Melmoth – Cato
• Louis-Sébastien Mercier – L'Essai sur l'art dramatique
• John Scott – Observations on the Present State of the Parochial and Vagrant Poor

  Births

• April 9 – Étienne Aignan, French translator, librettist and dramatist
• May 19 – Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, Swiss scholar of literature, history and economics
• August 21 – Jens Christian Djurhuus, Faroese poet
• October 1 – Peter Kaiser, Liechtenstein statesman and historian
• October 23 – Francis Jeffrey, Scottish jurist and critic
• December 9 – Marianne Ehrenström, Swedish musician and writer

  Deaths

• January 21 – Alexis Piron, French dramatist and epigrammatist
• April 20 – Hubert-François Gravelot, French book illustrator
• April 25 – Daniele Farlati, ecclesiastical historian
• May 15 – Alban Butler, hagiographer
• July 5 – Francisco José Freire, Portuguese historian and philologist
• August 3 – Stanisław Konarski, Polish political writer, poet and dramatist
• August 20 – Enrique Florez, Spanish historian
• August 28 – John Ranby, English surgeon and writer on surgery
• September 18 – John Cunningham, Irish poet, dramatist and actor
• November 16 – John Hawkesworth, English poet and editor