1785 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1785.

Events

January 1
- The Daily Universal Register (later The Times) is first published, in London.^[1]
- The Paris theatre company ThÃ©Ã¢tre des VariÃ©tÃ©s-Amusantes moves to a temporary new building in the gardens of the Palais-Royal.
February 2 â Sarah Siddons makes her London debut in her most famous rÃ´le, Lady Macbeth, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.^[2]
February â The English heiress Mary Bowes escapes from her husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney, and begins divorce proceedings.
April 14 â After today's death of the English poet William Whitehead in London, Thomas Warton succeeds him as Poet Laureate of Great Britain, William Mason having refused the post.
May 22 â Robert Burns' first child, Elizabeth ("Dear-bought Bess"), is born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton.^[3]
June 23 â The Litvak rabbi and writer Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg dies at Metz in France after a book-case topples on him, according to tradition.^[4]
November 28 â The Marquis de Sade finishes writing The 120 Days of Sodom (Les 120 JournÃ©es de Sodome) while imprisoned in the Bastille; it will not be published until 1904.
unknown date
- Giacomo Casanova is appointed librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein at the Duchcov ChÃ¢teau in Bohemia.^[5]
- A new building for the Prussian Royal Library is completed in Berlin.

Anna Maria Bennett â Anna
Elizabeth Blower â Maria
Denis Diderot, part trans. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe â Jacques the Fatalist (Jacques der Fatalist und sein Herr)
Richard Graves â Eugenius
Karl Philipp Moritz â Anton Reiser (to 1790)

Rudolf Erich Raspe, anonymously â Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia

JÃ¡nos Bacsanyi â The Valour of the Magyars
Samuel Egerton Brydges â Sonnets and other Poems
Robert Burns â "To a Mouse"
William Combe â The Royal Dream
William Cowper â The Task
George Crabbe â The News-Paper
William Hayley â A Philosophical, Historical and Moral Essay on Old Maids
Samuel Johnson â The Poetical Works
Friedrich Schiller â Ode to Joy (An die Freude)
Charles Wilkins (translator) â Bhagvat-geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon
John Wolcot as "Peter Pindar"
- The Lousiad
- Lyric Odes, for the Year 1785
Ann Yearsley â Poems

Ethan Allen â Reason: the Only Oracle of Man^[6]
James Boswell â The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Edmund Burke â Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts
Francis Grose â A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Samuel Johnson â Prayers and Meditations
Immanuel Kant â Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
William Paley â The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy
Clara Reeve â The Progress of Romance
Thomas Reid â Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
John Scott â Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English Poets

January 4 â Jakob Grimm, German philologist, jurist and mythologist (died 1863)
January 31 â Magdalena Dobromila RettigovÃ¡, Czech cookery writer (died 1845)
March 3 â Frances Mary Richardson Currer, English heiress and bibliophile (died 1861)
March 7 â Alessandro Manzoni, Italian poet and novelist (died 1873)
March 18 â He Changling (è³é·é½¡), Chinese scholar and writer on governance (died 1848)
March 21 â Henry Kirke White, English poet (died 1806)
April 4 â Bettina von Arnim, German novelist (died 1859)
April 7 â Lorenzo HammarskÃ¶ld, Swedish poet and author (died 1827)
May 3 â Vicente LÃ³pez y Planes, Argentine politician and writer (died 1856)
May 18 â John Wilson (Christopher North), Scottish writer (died 1854)
August 15 â Thomas De Quincey, English essayist (died 1859)
October 18 â Thomas Love Peacock, English novelist, poet and East India Company official (died 1866)
October 30 â Hermann, FÃ¼rst von PÃ¼ckler-Muskau â German travel and gardening writer (died 1871)
unknown date â Neofit Bozveli, Bulgarian educator and clergyman, early figure in the Bulgarian National Revival (died 1848)

January 19 â Jonathan Toup, English classicist, critic and cleric (born 1713)^[7]
April 14 â William Whitehead, English poet laureate (born 1715)
May 4 â JÃ¡nos Sajnovics, Hungarian linguist (born 1733)
August 31 â Pietro Chiari, Italian playwright, novelist and librettist (born 1712)
November 12 â Richard Burn, English legal writer (born 1709)
November 25 â Richard Glover, English poet and politician (born 1712)
December 6 â Kitty Clive, English actress and writer of farce (born 1711)
December 18 â Joseph Allegranza, Milanese historian (born 1715)
December 29 â Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian-born Danish poet and satirist (born 1742)
unknown date â Ali Haider Multani, Punjabi Sufi poet (born 1690)^[8]