1759 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1759.

Events

January – Journal des Dames published in France.
By January 15 – Voltaire's satirical novella Candide, ou l'Optimisme is published simultaneously in five countries.
January 15 – The British Museum opens in London.
March 5 – Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie is proscribed by the Vatican and temporarily suppressed by the French government. The ban is lifted in September to allow publication of a revised version.
July 27 – The earliest known professional performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet in North America is given by the American Company in Philadelphia, with Lewis Hallam Jr. as Hamlet.
August 12 – In the Seven Years' War Battle of Kunersdorf, the German poet Major Ewald Christian von Kleist is fatally injured.
December – Laurence Sterne has the first two volumes of his comic metafictional novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman printed in York, in a shop owned by Ann Ward.
December 22 – The writer and critic William Warburton is nominated Anglican Bishop of Gloucester.
unknown dates
*Rev. Hugh Blair begins to teach a course on the principles of literary composition at the University of Edinburgh, the first held in the field of English literature.
*Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch becomes a professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Jena.

Anonymous – The History of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House
Sarah Fielding – The History of the Countess of Dellwyn
Samuel Johnson – The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia.
Gotthold Lessing – Fables
Madame Riccoboni – Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby
William Rider – Candidus
Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, vols 1–2
Voltaire – ''Candide''

Franz Aepinus – Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi
Edmund Burke – The Annual Register
Angélique du Coudray – Abrégé de l'art des accouchements
Alexander Gerard – An Essay on Taste
Oliver Goldsmith
*The Bee
*An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe
David Hume – The History of England, Under the House of Tudor
Richard Hurd – Moral and Political Dialogues
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon – The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Written by Himself
Rai Chatar Man Kayath – Chahar Gulshan
William Robertson – The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James
Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Arthur Young – Reflections on the Present State of Affairs at Home and Abroad
Edward Young – ''Conjectures on Original Composition''

January 25 – Robert Burns, Scottish poet writing in Braid Scots and English
March 5 – John Jamieson, Scottish lexicographer
March 29 – Alexander Chalmers, Scottish biographer and editor
April 27 – Mary Wollstonecraft, English political writer and advocate of women's rights
May 4 – Isabella Kelly, Scottish novelist and poet
June 17 – Helen Maria Williams, English novelist, poet and translator from French
October 13 – Mary Hays, English writer and advocate of women's rights
November 10 – Friedrich Schiller, German poet and dramatist
December 25 – Richard Porson, English classicist
unknown date – Deen Mahomet, author of first book in English by an Indian