1767 in literature
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Events
- January 29 â The former watchmaker and entrepreneur Pierre Beaumarchais has his first full-length drama, Eugénie, premièred at the Comédie-Française. Revised in two days, it establishes his reputation in this field.
- February â King George III of Great Britain requests an introduction to Samuel Johnson from his librarian, Frederick Augusta Barnard. They meet in the library of the Queen's House.[1]
- April 24 â First professional performance of a play by an American, The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey (died 1763), at the new Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia with Lewis Hallam Jr. in a leading rôle.[2]
- December 7 â John Street Theatre (Manhattan), the first permanent theater in New York City, is opened by David Douglass with a performance of The Beaux' Stratagem.[3]
- Construction of Teatro Real Coliseo de Carlos III de Aranjuez, the first enclosed theatre in Spain, begins.
- Richard Price's volume of sermons, Four Dissertations, is published by Andrew Millar and Thomas Cadell in London, and he joins the "Bowood circle", a group of liberal intellectuals around William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, at Bowood House in Wiltshire (England) and corresponds with Benjamin Franklin.[4]
- Publication of the Epistles and Book of Revelation in Manx as Sceeuyn Paul yn Ostyl gys ny Romanee completes the first translation of the New Testament into that language.[5]
- Publication of the first secular prose book in any of the Sorbian languages by Jurij MjeÅ.
New books
Fiction
- James Boswell â Dorando
- Phebe Gibbes â The Woman of Fashion
- Hugh Kelly â Memoirs of a Magdalen
- Susannah Minifie â Barford Abbey
- Frances Sheridan
- Conclusion of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (posthumous)
- The History of Nourjahad
- Laurence Sterne â The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman vol. ix
- Unca Eliza Winkfield (pseudonym) â The Female American
- Arthur Young â The Adventures of Emmera
Drama
- Pierre Beaumarchais â Eugénie
- Richard Bentley â Philodamus
- Isaac Bickerstaffe â Lace in the City
- George Colman the Elder
- The English Merchant
- The Oxonian in Town
- David Garrick â Cymon
- Hall Hartson â The Countess of Salisbury
- Thomas Hull â The Perplexities
- William Kenrick â The Widowed Wife
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing â Minna von Barnhelm
- Arthur Murphy â The School for Guardians
Poetry
- Michael Bruce â Elegy Written in Spring
- Francis Fawkes â Partridge-Shooting
- Oliver Goldsmith, ed. â The Beauties of English Poesy
- Richard Jago â Edge-Hill
- Henry Jones â Kew Garden
- Christopher Smart (translation) â The Works of Horace, Translated into Verse
Non-fiction
- John Byrom â The Universal English Short-hand
- William Duff â An Essay on Original Genius
- Richard Farmer â An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare
- Adam Ferguson â An Essay on the History of Civil Society
- Baron d'Holbach, Paul Henry Thiry â Christianisme dévoilé
- Catharine Macaulay â Loose Remarks on Mr. Hobbes's Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society (on Hobbes's 1651 work)
- Moses Mendelssohn â Phädon
- Joseph Priestley â The History and Present State of Electricity
- William Warburton â Sermons and Discourses
- Arthur Young â The Farmer's Letters to the People of England
Births
- January 1 â Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish novelist (died 1849)
- February 4 â Andrew Marschalk, American printer (died 1838)
- February 6 â Saul Ascher, German political writer and translator (died 1822)
- March 1 â Alexander Balfour, Scottish novelist, short-story writer and poet (died 1829)
- April 9 â Joseph Fiévée, French journalist, essayist, novelist and dramatist (died 1839)
- April 24 â Dorothy Ripley, English missionary and reformist writer (died 1832)
- September 6 â Thomas Bayly Howell, English legal writer (died 1815)
- September 8 â August Wilhelm Schlegel, German poet and translator (died 1845)
- September 10 â Melchiorre Gioia, Italian philosophical writer (died 1829)
- October 25 â Benjamin Constant, Swiss-French novelist (died 1830)
- November 26 (bapt.) â Elizabeth Bentley, English poet (died 1839)
- December 8 â Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, French poet and composer (died 1825)
Deaths
- February 16 â David Erskine Baker, English writer on drama and translator (born 1730)[6]
- February 28 â Charles Balguy, English translator and medical writer (born 1708)
- April 27 â Johann Gottlob Carpzov, German Biblical scholar (born 1679)
- July 15 â Michael Bruce, Scottish poet and hymnist (born 1746)
- July 26 â Paul Gottlieb Werlhof, German poet and physician (born 1699)
- August 21 â Thomas Osborne, English publisher and bookseller (born 1704)
- September 11 â Theophilus Evans, Welsh historian and cleric (born 1693)
- October 1 â Léon Ménard, French historical writer and lawyer (born 1706)[7]
- December 22 â John Newbery, English children's author and publisher (born 1713)