1782 in literature

Events

• January 13 – Friedrich Schiller's first play, the revolutionary melodrama The Robbers , causes a sensation in Mannheim at its first performance. Schiller, a military doctor at the time, is arrested for attending the performance without having permission to leave his regiment.
• August 18 – William Blake marries Catherine Boucher at St Mary's Church, Battersea. In the same year, he meets his future patron, John Flaxman.
• October 10 – Sarah Siddons makes a triumphant return to the Drury Lane Theatre in London, in the title role of David Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's Isabella, or, The Fatal Marriage.

• Charles Dibdin becomes joint manager of the Royal Circus, afterwards known as the Surrey Theatre, in London.
• The Siku Quanshu is completed, the largest literary compilation in China's history. The books are bound in 36,381 volumes with more than 79,000 chapters, containing about 2.3 million pages and 800 million Chinese characters.

  New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Blower – George Bateman
• Fanny Burney – Cecilia
• J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur – Letters from an American Farmer
• Pierre Choderlos de Laclos – Les Liaisons dangereuses
• Lady Mary Hamilton – The Life of Mrs. Justman
• Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken – Historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart

  Drama

• Vittorio Alfieri – Saul
• Hannah Cowley – The Belle's Stratagem
• Richard Cumberland – The Walloons
• Charles Nicolas Favart – Le Diable boiteux
• Denis Fonvizin – The Minor
• Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian – Le Bon Ménage
• Louis-Sébastien Mercier
• *Le Déserteur
• *La Destruction de la ligue
• John O'Keeffe
• *The Castle of Andalusia
• *Harlequin Teague
• *The Lord Mayor's Day

  Poetry

• William Cowper
• *The Diverting History of John Gilpin
• *Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk
• *Poems
• John Freeth – Modern Songs
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – "Erlkönig"
• William Hayley – An Essay on Epic Poetry in Five Epistles to Mason
• William Mason
• *An Archaeological Epistle to Jeremiah Milles....
• *King Stephen's Watch
• Hannah More – Sacred Dramas for Young Persons
• Edward Rushton – The Dismember'd Empire
• John Scott – Poetical Works
• Helen Maria Williams – Edwin and Eltruda
• John Wolcot as "Peter Pindar" – Lyric Odes, to the Royal Academicians

  Non-fiction

• Thomas Day – Reflections upon the Present State of England, and the Independence of America
• William Gilpin – Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales
• Edmond Malone – Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley
• John Nichols – Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer
• Thomas Pennant – The Journey from Chester to London
• Isaac Reed – Biographia Dramatica
• Joseph Ritson – Observations on the Three First Volumes of the History of English Poetry
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• *The Confessions
• *Reveries of a Solitary Walker
• J. Hector St. John – Letters from an American Farmer
• Louis Claude de Saint-Martin – Tableau naturel des rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l'homme, et l'univers
• Ignatius Sancho – Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African
• Thomas Spence – The History of Crusonia on Robinson Crusoe's Island
• Emanuel Swedenborg – Heaven and Hell
• Thomas Tyrwhitt – A Vindication of the Appendix to the Poems, called Rowley's
• Joseph Warton – An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope
• Thomas Warton – An Enquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley

  Births

• January 30 – Ann Taylor, English poet and critic
• February – Georg Koës, Danish philologist
• March 2 – Isaac Pocock, English dramatist and painter
• April 16 – William Jerdan, Scottish journalist
• June 9 – Peter Fisher, Canadian historian
• September 7 – Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, Scottish novelist
• September 19 – Richard Lower, English dialect poet
• September 25 – Charles Maturin, Irish dramatist and novelist
• Grace Kennedy, Scottish novelist
• Benjamin Thorpe, English scholar of Anglo-Saxon

  Deaths

• January 1 – Juan Crespí, Majorcan explorer and diarist
• January 21 – Giovanni Cristofano Amaduzzi, Italian philologist
• January 29 – Johanna Charlotte Unzer, German writer
• February 10 – Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, German theosopher
• February 14 – Thomas Newton, English Biblical commentator
• April 12 – Metastasio, Italian poet
• July 2 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher
• December 27 – Henry Home, Lord Kames, Scottish philosopher

• Jean-Martin de Prades, French theologian