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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1781.

Events

• March 27 – George Crabbe writes to Edmund Burke, enclosing examples of his work. The outcome is the publication of Crabbe's poem The Library.
• August 5 – Antonín Strnad completes an inventory of the contents of the Clementinum in Prague, which becomes a national library.
• unknown date – Rudolf Erich Raspe (anonymously) publishes "M-h-s-nsche Geschichten" ("M-h-s-n Stories") in the Berlin humor magazine Vade mecum für lustige Leute ("Handbook for Fun-loving People"), the first appearance of Baron Munchausen in fiction.

New books

Fiction

• Robert Bage – Mount Henneth
• Christoph Friedrich Bretzner – Belmont und Constanze
• William Combe – Letters of an Italian Nun and an English Gentleman
• Eugenio Espejo – La ciencia blancardina
• Benjamin Franklin – A Letter To A Royal Academy
• Charles Johnstone – The History of John Juniper
• Henry Mackenzie – Julia de Roubignei
• Glocester Ridley – Melanpus
• Anna Seward – Monody on Major André

Children

• Mrs. Barbauld – Hymns in Prose for Children
• Joachim Heinrich Campe – Die Entdeckung von Amerika (Discovery of America)

Drama

• Miles Peter Andrews – Dissipation
• Frances Brooke – The Siege of Sinope
• Hannah Cowley – The World as it Goes
• Elizabeth Craven – The Miniature Picture
• John Delap – The Royal Suppliants
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Iphigenia in Tauris (revised version)
• Thomas Holcroft – Duplicity
• Elizabeth Inchbald – Polygamy
• Robert Jephson – The Count of Narbonne
• John O'Keeffe – The Agreeable Surprise
• Samuel Jackson Pratt – The Fair Circassian
• Friedrich Schiller – The Robbers (Die Räuber, published)
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan
  • The Critic (published)
  • A Trip to Scarborough

Poetry

• William Cowper – Anti-Thelyphthora
• George Crabbe – The Library
• Maria De Fleury – Poems, Occasioned by the Confinement and Acquittal of the Right Honourable Lord George Gordon, President of the Protestant Association
• Santa Rita Durão – Caramuru
• Anne Francis – A Poetical Translation of the Song of Solomon
• Philip Freneau – The British Prison-Ship
• William Hayley – The Triumphs of Temper
• George Keate – Works
• Samuel Jackson Pratt – Sympathy

Non-fiction

• Maria De Fleury – Unrighteous Abuse Detected and Chastised
• Mary Deverell – Sermons on the Following Subjects...
• Edward Gibbon – Volumes II and III of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Henry Home – Loose Hints Upon Education
• Samuel Johnson
  • The Beauties of Johnson
  • Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
• Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason
• John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in Italy
• John Newton – Cardiphonia
• John Nichols – Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth
• Magister Pianco (Hans Heinrich von Ecker und Eckhoffen) – Der Rosenkreutzer in seiner Blösse
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Essai sur l'origine des langues

Births

• January 26 – Ludwig Achim von Arnim, German poet and novelist (died 1831)
• January 30 – Adelbert von Chamisso, German poet and botanist (died 1838)
• February 26 – Peter Andresen Oelrichs, Heligoland-born lexicographer (died 1869)
• March 17 – Ebenezer Elliott, English poet (died 1849)
• May 14 – Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer, German historian (died 1873)
• June 12 (probable) – Christian Isobel Johnstone, Scottish journalist and novelist (died 1857)
• November 3 – Sarah Elizabeth Utterson, English translator and short story writer (died 1851)
• November 6 – Lucy Aikin (Mary Godolphin), English historical writer (died 1864)
• November 29 – Andrés Bello, Venezuelan polymath (died 1865)
• December 6 – Charlotte von Ahlefeld, German novelist (died 1849)
• December 11 – David Brewster, Scottish scientist and writer (died 1868)

Deaths

• February 15 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German philosopher and dramatist (born 1729)
• February 22 – Anna Magdalena Godiche, Danish book printer and publisher (born 1721)
• February 24 – Edward Capell, English Shakespeare scholar (born 1713)
• March 1 – Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, French historian, classicist and lexicographer (born 1697)
• March 17 – Johannes Ewald, Danish dramatist and poet (born 1743)
• May 8 – Richard Jago, English poet and cleric (born 1715)
• June 24 – Anna Miller, English poet and salon hostess (born 1741)
• September 11 – Johann August Ernesti, German theologian and philologist (born 1707)
• November 2 – José Francisco de Isla, Spanish satirist (born 1703)
• November 4 – Johann Nikolaus Götz, German poet (born 1721)
• December 7 – Judith Madan, English poet (born 1702)

References

1. Edmund Burke (1852). The Works and Correspondence Of...Edmund Burke. F. & J. Rivington. p. 472.
2. Ainger, Alfred (1903). Crabbe. New York: Macmillan. pp. 31–32.
3. Zdislav Šíma (2001). Astronomie a Klementinum. Národní knihovna České republiky. p. 94. ISBN 978-80-7050-386-7.
4. Blamires, David (2009). "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen". Telling Tales: The Impact of Germany on English Children's Books 1780–1918. OBP collection. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. pp. 8–21. ISBN 9781906924119.
5. Philip L. Astuto (2003), Eugenio Espejo (1747–1795), Reformador ecuatoriano de la Ilustración. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. p. 82. ISBN 9978-92-241-5.
6. "Manuscripts and Rare Printed Works of Hannah More (1745–1833) and her circle from the Clark Library, Los Angeles". Women, Morality And Advice Literature. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
7. Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Arnim, Ludwig Joachim von" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
8. Eva R. Trautmann; Adelbert von Chamisso (1986). The Alaska diary of Adelbert von Chamisso, naturalist on the Kotzebue voyage, 1815-1818. Cook Inlet Historical Society. p. 1.
9. "Utterson, Sarah Elizabeth, 1781-1851". Library of Congress.
10. Linda J. Turzynski, "Lucy Aikin." Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Children's Writers, 1800–1880. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc, 1996
11. Leonard, Irving A. (1954). "Andrés Bello (1781-1865), National Hero". The Hispanic American Historical Review. 34 (4): 502–505. doi:10.2307/2509082. ISSN 0018-2168. JSTOR 2509082.
12. Karl Goedeke (1875). "Ahlefeldt, Charlotte von". Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 1. p. 160.
13. Yasukata, Toshimasa (2002). Lessing's philosophy of religion and the German enlightenment: Lessing on Christianity and reason. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780198033103.
14. Lauritz Nielsen. "A. H. Godiche". Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, Gyldendal. Retrieved April 1, 2019.
15.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Capell, Edward". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 249.
16. "Johannes Ewald". Illustreret dansk Literaturhistorie. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
17. Antiquities in Leicestershire. Kraus Reprint Company. 1968. p. 464.
18. Klemme, Heiner (2016). The Bloomsbury dictionary of eighteenth-century German philosophers. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. p. 189. ISBN 9781474255981.
19.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Götz, Johann Nikolaus". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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