1796 in literature

Events

• Samuel Ireland publishes a collection of Shakespearean forgeries in his Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments Under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare. Edmond Malone exposes them in his An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments on 31 March, and the forged 'Shakespearean' play, Vortigern and Rowena, is able to sustain just a single performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, on 2 April. Ireland's son, William Henry, confesses to the fraud in An Authentic Account of the Shakespearean Manuscripts.
• January – Charles Lamb ends a six-week spell in a mental asylum at Hoxton.
• February 29 – The Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal is established as the Royal Public Library of the Court in Lisbon.
• March 1 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge launches his periodical The Watchman; it lasts for only ten issues. In April his first verse collection, Poems on Various Subjects, is published in London.
• July 21 – The Scottish national poet, Robert Burns, dies in Dumfries at the age of 37. His funeral takes place on July 25, while his wife, Jean, is in labour with their ninth child together, Maxwell. Burns is at first buried in the far corner of St Michael's Churchyard in Dumfries. The volume of The Scots Musical Museum published this year includes his versions of "Auld Lang Syne" and "Charlie Is My Darling".
• July 30 – A performance of a historical drama, Jane Shore, is given in Sydney, Australia; the playbill, printed by George Hughes, is the earliest known surviving item printed in that country.
• September 22 – Mary Lamb commits matricide.
• October
• *Jane Austen begins writing First Impressions, the first version of Pride and Prejudice.
• *Caroline von Wolzogen's novel Agnes von Lilien begins anonymous serialization in the monthly Die Horen, edited by her brother-in-law Friedrich Schiller.

  New books

Fiction

• Robert Bage – Hermsprong: or, Man As He Is Not
• Elizabeth Bonhôte – Bungay Castle
• Fanny Burney – Camilla
• Denis Diderot – Jacques the Fatalist
• Marquis Carl von Grosse – Horrid Mysteries
• Elizabeth Hamilton – Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah
• Mary Hays – Memoirs of Emma Courtney
• Elizabeth Inchbald – Nature and Art
• Matthew Lewis – The Monk
• Eliza Parsons – The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale
• Regina Maria Roche – The Children of the Abbey: a Tale
• Jane West – A Gossip's Story, and a Legendary Tale

  Children

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Victor, ou l’Enfant de la forêt
• Maria Edgeworth – The Parent's Assistant
• Jane West – A Gossip's Story, and a Legendary Tale

  Drama

• Richard Cumberland – Don Pedro
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Egmont
• Mary Darby Robinson – The Sicilian Lover
• The Iron Chest

  Poetry

Non-fiction

• Ralph Broome
• *Observations on Mr. Paine's Pamphlet Entitled the Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance...
• *Strictures on Mr. Burke's Two Letters, Addressed to a Member of the Present Parliament
• Edmund Burke – A Letter from The Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks made upon him and his pension
• Edward Gibbon – Memoirs of My Life and Writings
• Susannah Willard Johnson – A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Johnson
• John Gabriel Stedman – The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam
• Mary Wollstonecraft – Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

  Births

• January 4 – Henry George Bohn, English bibliographer and publisher
• February 17 – Charlotte Anley, English didactic novelist and religious writer
• May 1 – Junius Brutus Booth, English-born actor
• May 4 – William H. Prescott, American historian
• August 19 – Agnes Strickland, English historical writer and poet
• September 19 – Hartley Coleridge, English poet, biographer and essayist
• July 15 – Thomas Bulfinch, American writer on mythology
• November 2 – Frederick Chamier, English novelist and Royal Navy captain
• December 19 – Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, Spanish playwright

  Deaths

• January 13 – John Anderson, Scottish natural philosopher and scientist
• February 17 – James Macpherson, Scottish poet
• May 6 – Adolf Freiherr Knigge, German writer on etiquette
• June 7 – Elisabetta Caminèr Turra, Venetian writer and translator
• July 21 – Robert Burns, Scottish poet
• October 7 – Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher