1758 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1758.
Events
- April 15 – Samuel Johnson begins publishing a series of essays, The Idler (1758–1760), in the Universal Chronicle.
- April 24 – Robert Dodsley and his brother James sign a contract with Edmund Burke to launch The Annual Register.
- April 27 – The French historian Jean-François Marmontel enters the service of Madame de Pompadour.
- July/August – The poet and children's writer Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her family move to Warrington in north-west England.
- October – Voltaire buys an estate at Ferney in eastern France.
- unknown date – The French mathematician and philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis moves to his final home in Basel, Switzerland.
New books
Fiction
- Charlotte Lennox – Henrietta
- Madame (Riccoboni) – Histoire du marquis de Cressy
- Horace Walpole – ''A Dialogue Between Two Great Ladies''
Drama
- John Cleland – Tombo-Chiqui, or, The American Savage
- Denis Diderot – Le Père de famille
- Robert Dodsley – Cleone
- David Garrick – Florizel and Perdita
- John Home – Aegis
- Charlotte Lennox – Philander
- Arthur Murphy – The Upholsterer
- George Alexander Stevens – ''Albion Restored''
Poetry
- Mark Akenside – An Ode to the Country Gentlemen
- Anica Bošković – Dijalog
- John Gilbert Cooper – The Call of Aristippus
- Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim – Preussische Kriegslieder von einem Grenadier
- Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas
- James Macpherson – The Highlander
- Heyat Mahmud – Āmbiyābāṇī; Bengali
- Thomas Parnell – ''Posthumous Works''
Non-fiction
- John Armstrong as Launcelot Temple – Sketches, or, Essays on Various Subjects
- William Blackstone – A Discourse on the Study of Law
- Rev. Dr. John Brown – An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times
- Andrés Marcos Burriel – Paleografía española
- Elizabeth Carter – All the Works of Epictetus Which Are Now Extant
- José Francisco de Isla – Historia del famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes
- Benjamin Franklin – Father Abraham's Sermon
- Oliver Goldsmith as "James Willington" – The Memoirs of a Protestant
- William Hawkins – Tracts in Divinity
- Claude Adrien Helvétius – De l'Esprit
- Henry Home – Historical Law-Tracts
- Carl Linnaeus – Systema Naturae (10th edition), Tomus I, Animalia
- Robert Lowth – The Life of William of Wykeham
- Thomas Marryat – Therapeutics, or a New Practice of Physic
- Antoine-Joseph Pernety
- *Dictionnaire mytho-hermétique, dans lequel on trouve les allégories fabuleuses des poètes, les métaphores, les énigmes et les termes barbares des philosophes hermétiques expliqués
- *Les Fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées et réduites au même principe, avec une explication des hiéroglyphes et de la guerre de Troye
- Antoine Simon Le Page Du Pratz – Histoire de la Louisiane
- Richard Price – A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals
- Emanuel Swedenborg
- *Earths in the Universe
- *Heaven and Hell
- *New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine
- *The Last Judgement
- Jonathan Swift – The History of the Last Four Years of the Queen
- Horace Walpole
- *A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England
- *Fugitive Pieces
- Arthur Young – ''The Theatre of the Present War in North America''
Births
- January 12 – Dmitry Gorchakov, Russian writer, dramatist and poet
- February 3
- *Vasily Kapnist, Ukrainian poet and playwright
- *Valentin Vodnik, Carniolan Slovene poet, writer and priest
- February 10 – Amalia Holst, German writer, intellectual, and feminist
- March 15 – Magdalene Sophie Buchholm, Norwegian poet
- April 30 – Jane West, English novelist and writer of conduct books
- October 16 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer
- December 9 – Richard Colt Hoare, English antiquary, archeologist and traveler
Deaths
- January 7 – Allan Ramsay the Elder, Scottish poet
- March 22 – Jonathan Edwards, American theologian and preacher
- October – Theophilus Cibber, English dramatist and actor
- October 27 bur. – Elizabeth Blackwell, Scottish botanic writer and illustrator
- December 25 – James Hervey, English religious writer and cleric