1771 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1771.
Events
- April 9 – Pedro Correia Garção is arrested and committed to prison by Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal.
- unknown dates
- *Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling inaugurates the fashion for sentimentalism in novels.
- *Sophie von La Roche's Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim: Von einer Freundin derselben aus Original-Papieren und andern zuverläßigen Quellen gezogen, completed at Bönnigheim and published this year in Leipzig edited by the author's cousin Christoph Wieland in 2 volumes, is, within the tradition of German literature, the first significant novel by a woman, the first epistolary novel and the first "sentimental" novel.
- *Matthias Claudius begins editing and publishing the newspaper Der Wandsbecker Bothe.
- *Slovene literature: The Nouvi Zákon, a translation of the New Testament into the Prekmurje Slovene language by István Küzmics, the Hungarian Slovene writer and evangelical pastor, is published.
- *Archbishop Richard Robinson founds the Armagh Public Library in the north of Ireland.
New books
Fiction
- Sophia Briscoe – Miss Melmoth; or the New Clarissa
- Claude Joseph Dorat – Les Sacrifices de l'amour
- Elizabeth Griffith – The History of Lady Barton
- John Langhorne – Letters to Eleonara
- Henry Mackenzie – The Man of Feeling
- Louis-Sébastien Mercier – L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais
- Tobias Smollett – The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
- Sophie von La Roche – ''Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim''
Children
- Christopher Smart – ''Hymns for the Amusement of Children''
Drama
- Isaac Bickerstaffe – He Wou'd If He Cou'd
- José Cadalso – Sancho García
- Richard Cumberland – The West Indian
- Denis Diderot – Le Fils Naturel
- Carlo Goldoni – Le Bourru Bienfaisant
- Samuel Foote – The Maid of Bath
- Hugh Kelly – Clementina
- George Alexander Stevens – The Fair Orphan
- Alexander Sumarokov – ''Dmitri the Usurper''
Poetry
- James Beattie – The Minstrel
- James Cawthorn – Poems
- John Langhorne – The Fables of Flora
- Thomas Percy – The Hermit of Warkworth
- Henry James Pye – The Triumph of Fashion
- Christoph Martin Wieland – ''Der neue Amadis''
Non-fiction
- John Brown – Description of the Lake of Keswick
- Charles Burney – The Present State of Music in France and Italy
- John Dalrymple – Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland
- John William Fletcher – Five Checks to Antinomianism
- Oliver Goldsmith – The History of England
- Samuel Johnson – Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands
- Martinez de Pasqually – Traité sur la réintégration des êtres dans leur première propriété, vertu et puissance spirituelle divine
- Thomas Pennant – A Tour in Scotland
- Richard Price – Observations on Reversionary Payments
- William Smellie – Encyclopædia Britannica
- Emanuel Swedenborg – True Christian Religion
- John Wesley – Works
- Arthur Young – The Farmer's Tour Through the East of England
- Real Academia Española – ''Gramática''
Births
- January 17 – Charles Brockden Brown, American novelist
- February 5 – John Lingard, English historian and Catholic priest
- March 23 – Lumley Skeffington, English playwright and fop
- June 13 – Sydney Smith, English wit and cleric
- August 15 – Sir Walter Scott, Scottish novelist and poet
- November 4 – James Montgomery, Scottish-born poet and hymnist
- December 25 – Dorothy Wordsworth, English diarist and poet
- December 26 – Heinrich Joseph von Collin, Austrian dramatist
Deaths
- January 11 – Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, French philosopher
- February 2 – John Lockman, English historian, poet and translator
- March 9 – Henry Pemberton, English man of letters and physician
- May 21 – Christopher Smart, English poet
- July 30 – Thomas Gray, English poet
- September 17 – Tobias Smollett, Scottish novelist, journalist and translator
- October 14 – John Gill, English theologian
- December 26 – Claude Adrien Helvétius, French philosopher
- probable – Luis Galiana y Cervera, Spanish theologian, philologist and writer