1779 in literature
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1779.Events
Fiction
- Richard Graves – Columella
- Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi – Woldemar
- Ignacy Krasicki – Fables and Parables
- Nocturnal Revels
- Samuel Jackson Pratt as "Courtney Melmoth"
- *Shenstone-Green
- *The Tutor of Truth
- The Sorrows of Werther
Children
- Joachim Heinrich Campe – Robinson der Jüngere
Drama
- Fanny Burney – The Witlings
- Hannah Cowley
- *Albina, Countess Raimond
- *Who's the Dupe
- Richard Cumberland – Calypso
- Hugh Downman – Lucius Junius Brutus
- Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian – Les Deux Billets
- Robert Jephson – The Law of Lombardy
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Nathan der Weise
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The Critic
Poetry
- William Cowper and John Newton – Olney Hymns
- Robert Fergusson – Poems
- William Hayley – Epistle to Admiral Keppel
- Ann Murry – Poems
- Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Epístola de Jovino a Anfriso, escrita desde el Paular
- Leandro Fernandez de Moratín – La toma de Granada por los Reyes Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel
- Tomás de Iriarte – La música
Non-fiction
- John Abercrombie – The British Fruit Gardener and Art of Pruning
- Anna Barbauld – Lessons for Children
- James Burnett – Antient Metaphysics
- Edward Capell – Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare
- George Chalmers –
- Edward Gibbon – A Vindication of Some Passages in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- David Hume – Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
- Samuel Johnson – Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets
- Vicessimus Knox – Essays
- Franz Mesmer – Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
- John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany
- Thomas Scott – The Force of Truth
- Horace Walpole – A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton
Births
- January 18 – Peter Mark Roget, English lexicographer
- March 1 – Gottfried Weber, German writer on music
- March 3 – Matthäus Casimir von Collin, Austrian poet and dramatist
- March 10 – Frances Trollope, English novelist and writer
- March 30 – Antoine Ó Raifteiri, Irish Gaelic poet
- May 2 – John Galt, Scottish novelist and entrepreneur
- May 28 – Thomas Moore, Irish poet and songwriter
- August 1 – Francis Scott Key, American poet
- September 10 – Alexander Voeykov, Russian poet
- November 14 – Adam Oehlenschläger, Danish Romantic poet and dramatist
- December 22 – Thomas Gaisford, English classicist
- December 31 – Horace Smith, English poet and novelist
Deaths
- January 20 – David Garrick, English dramatist, actor and impresario
- March 4 – Heinrich Leopold Wagner, German dramatist
- June 7 – William Warburton, English writer, critic and cleric
- June 10 – William Kenrick, English novelist, playwright and satirist
- November 16 – Pehr Kalm, Swedish/Finnish botanist, naturalist and travel writer
- December 22 – István Küzmics, Hungarian writer in Prekmurje Slovene
Uncertain date
- Jane Gomeldon, English essayist and writer of maxims
