1778 in literature

Events

• c. November – Printing of Nathaniel Brassey Halhed's Grammar of the Bengali Language in Hooghly for the British East India Company is completed, the first such grammar in English and the first publication using a Bengali typeface, devised by Charles Wilkins.

• Novelist Sarah Scott gives up writing on receiving a legacy from her father.
• A new edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare is published, edited by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. It includes Edmond Malone's essay "An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were Written".
• Fanny Burney's novel Evelina is published anonymously.

  New books

Fiction

• Anonymous – The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman, Esquire, into Carnovirria, Taupiniera, Olfactaria, and Auditante, in New-Zealand; in the Island of Bonhommica, and in the Powerful Kingdom of Luxo-Volupto, on the Great Southern Continent
• Fanny Burney – Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World
• Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire – The Sylph. Sometimes ascribed to Sophia Briscoe
• Pierre-Louis Ginguené – Satire des Satires
• Ignacy Krasicki – Pan Podstoli, part 1
• Clara Reeve – The Old English Baron
• Lady Mary Walker – Munster Village

  Children

• Mrs. Barbauld
• *Lessons for Children of Two to Three
• *Lessons for Children of Three

  Drama

• Henry Brooke – collected plays
• Elizabeth Craven – The Sleep Walker
• Richard Cumberland
• *The Battle of Hastings
• *The Princess of Parma
• Charles Dibdin – Poor Vulcan
• Samuel Foote
• *The Devil upon Two Sticks
• *The Nabob
• *The Taylors
• Jean-François de La Harpe – Les Barmecides
• John Home – Alfred
• Hannah More – Percy
• John O'Keeffe – Tony Lumpkin in Town
• Samuel Jackson Pratt – Joseph Andrews
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The Camp

  Poetry

• John Codrington Bampfylde – Sixteen Sonnets
• Thomas Chatterton – Miscellanies
• William Combe – The Auction
• George Ellis as "Sir Gregory Gander" – Poetical Tales
• William Hayley – A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter
• John Scott – Moral Eclogues
• John Wolcot as "Peter Pindar" – A Poetical, Supplicating, Modest and Affecting Epistle to those Literary Colossuses the Reviewers
• Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Jovino a sus amigos de Sevilla
• Vicente Garcia de la Huerta – Obras poéticas
• Pedro Montengón – Odas

  Non-fiction

• Edmund Burke – Two Letters on the Trade of Ireland
• Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Elder – Lebenslaufe nach aufsteigender Linie
• Vicesimus Knox – Essays Moral and Literary
• Ann Murry – Mentoria
• Thomas Pennant – A Tour in Wales
• Gilbert Stuart – A View of Society in Europe
• Thomas West – A Guide to the Lakes
• Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro – Idea dell'Universo
• Francisco Javier Llampillas – Saggio apologetic della letteratura spagnuola contro le pregiudicate opinion di alcuni moderni scritori italiani

  Births

• January 26 – Ugo Foscolo, Italian poet
• March 24 – Robert Fleming Gourlay, Scottish-born Canadian agriculturist and writer
• April 10 – William Hazlitt, English essayist and literary critic
• April 19 – Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle, English diarist
• June 28 – John David Macbride, English Arabist and academic
• June 1 – Margaret Holford the younger, English poet and novelist
• August 22 – James Kirke Paulding, American novelist and politician
• September 9 – Clemens Brentano, German novelist and poet
• November 1 – Mary Brunton, Scottish novelist
• November 28 – Christoph Ernst von Houwald, German dramatist
• December 16 – Ludwig Robert, German dramatist
• December 18 – Joseph Grimaldi, English autobiographer and clown

  Deaths

• January 10 – Eva König, German woman of letters
• February 10 – Mary Jones, English poet
• March 13 – Charles le Beau, French historian
• May 27 – Christian Tobias Damm, German philologist and theologian
• May 30 – Voltaire, French philosopher and satirist
• July 3 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher
• July 5
• *Antonio Collalto, Italian actor and dramatist
• *James Townley, English dramatist
• October 6 – William Worthington, English theologian
• November 11 – Anne Steele, English poet and hymn-writer
• November 22 – Edward Rowe Mores, English antiquarian and scholar