1767 in literature
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1767.
Events
- January 29 – 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 – 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.
- April 24 – First professional performance of a play by an American, The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey, at the new Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia with Lewis Hallam Jr. in a leading rôle.
- December 7 – John Street Theatre (Manhattan), the first permanent theater in New York City, is opened by David Douglass with a performance of The Beaux' Stratagem.
- 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 and corresponds with Benjamin Franklin.
- 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.
- Publication of the first secular prose book in any of the Sorbian languages by Jurij Mjeń.
New books
Fiction
- James Boswell – Dorando
- Phebe Gibbes – The Woman of Fashion
- Hugh Kelly – Memoirs of a Magdalen
- Susannah Minifie – Barford Abbey
- Frances Sheridan
- *Conclusion of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph
- *The History of Nourjahad
- Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman vol. ix
- Unca Eliza Winkfield – The Female American
- Arthur Young – ''The Adventures of Emmera''
Drama
- Pierre Beaumarchais – Eugénie
- Richard Bentley – Philodamus
- Isaac Bickerstaffe – Lace in the City
- George Colman the Elder
- *The English Merchant
- *The Oxonian in Town
- David Garrick – Cymon
- Hall Hartson – The Countess of Salisbury
- Thomas Hull – The Perplexities
- William Kenrick – The Widowed Wife
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Minna von Barnhelm
- Arthur Murphy – ''The School for Guardians''
Poetry
- Michael Bruce – Elegy Written in Spring
- Francis Fawkes – Partridge-Shooting
- Oliver Goldsmith, ed. – The Beauties of English Poesy
- Richard Jago – Edge-Hill
- Henry Jones – Kew Garden
- Christopher Smart – ''The Works of Horace, Translated into Verse''
Non-fiction
- John Byrom – The Universal English Short-hand
- William Duff – An Essay on Original Genius
- Richard Farmer – An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare
- Adam Ferguson – An Essay on the History of Civil Society
- Baron d'Holbach, Paul Henry Thiry – Christianisme dévoilé
- Catharine Macaulay – Loose Remarks on Mr. Hobbes's Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society
- Moses Mendelssohn – Phädon
- Joseph Priestley – The History and Present State of Electricity
- William Warburton – Sermons and Discourses
- Arthur Young – ''The Farmer's Letters to the People of England''
Births
- January 1 – Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish novelist
- February 4 – Andrew Marschalk, American printer
- February 6 – Saul Ascher, German political writer and translator
- March 1 – Alexander Balfour, Scottish novelist, short-story writer and poet
- April 9 – Joseph Fiévée, French journalist, essayist, novelist and dramatist
- April 24 – Dorothy Ripley, English missionary and reformist writer
- September 6 – Thomas Bayly Howell, English legal writer
- September 8 – August Wilhelm Schlegel, German poet and translator
- September 10 – Melchiorre Gioia, Italian philosophical writer
- October 25 – Benjamin Constant, Swiss-French novelist
- November 26 – Elizabeth Bentley, English poet
- December 8 – Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, French poet and composer
Deaths
- February 16 – David Erskine Baker, English writer on drama and translator
- February 28 – Charles Balguy, English translator and medical writer
- April 27 – Johann Gottlob Carpzov, German Biblical scholar
- July 15 – Michael Bruce, Scottish poet and hymnist
- July 26 – Paul Gottlieb Werlhof, German poet and physician
- August 21 – Thomas Osborne, English publisher and bookseller
- September 11 – Theophilus Evans, Welsh historian and cleric
- October 1 – Léon Ménard, French historical writer and lawyer
- December 22 – John Newbery, English children's author and publisher