1787 in literature

Events

• January 15 – Ann Ward marries William Radcliffe, gaining the surname by which she will be known as a writer of Gothic novels.
• April 16 – Royall Tyler's The Contrast becomes the first comedy written by an American citizen to be professionally produced, at the John Street Theatre.
• April 17 – The Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is published by William Creech. It includes a Burns portrait by Alexander Nasmyth. The poet has great social success in the city's literary circles; 16-year-old Walter Scott meets him at the house of Adam Ferguson.
• June 27 – Just before midnight, Edward Gibbon completes The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the small summerhouse in his garden in Lausanne, Switzerland.
• November 21 – François-Joseph Talma makes his professional stage debut at the Comédie-Française as Seide, in Voltaire's Mahomet.
• December 4 – Robert Burns meets Agnes Maclehose at a party given by Miss Erskine Nimmo.
• King George III of Great Britain issues a Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice, which can be used to prosecute obscene publications.
• Friedrich Schiller arrives in Weimar.

  New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Bonhôte – Olivia, or, The Deserted Bride
• Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai – Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Sorrows of Young Werther
• Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse – Ardinghello and die glückseligen Inseln
• Elizabeth Helme – Louisa; or the Cottage on the Moor
• Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins – The Victim of Fancy
• Bernardin de Saint-Pierre – Paul et Virginie
• Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken – Abraham Blankaart

  Children

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Fanfan et Lolotte, ou Histoire de deux enfants abandonnés dans une île déserte

  Drama

• Pierre Beaumarchais – Tarare
• George Colman the Younger – Inkle and Yarico
• Germaine de Staël – Jeanne Grey
• Friedrich Schiller – Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien
• Royall Tyler – The Contrast

  Poetry

Non-fiction

• Thomas Best – A Concise Treatise on the Art of Angling
• Mathurin Jacques Brisson – Pesanteur Spécifique des Corps
• Ottobah Cugoano – Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species
• John Fenn – The Paston Letters
• John Hawkins – Life of Samuel Johnson
• Scots Musical Museum, vol. 1
• Mary Wollstonecraft – Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

  Births

• April 26 – Ludwig Uhland, German poet
• September 13 – John Adamson, English antiquary and expert on Portuguese
• November 4 – Edmund Kean, English actor
• November 21 – Bryan Procter, English poet
• December 16 – Mary Russell Mitford, English novelist

  Deaths

• April 2 – Francisco Javier Clavijero, Mexican-born historian
• June 19 – John Brown, Scottish theologian
• October 28 – Johann Karl August Musäus, German satirist and children's writer
• October 30 – Ferdinando Galiani, Italian economist
• November 3 – Robert Lowth, English poet, grammarian and bishop
• December 19 – Soame Jenyns, English poet and essayist