1782 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1782.

Events

January 13 – Friedrich Schiller's first play, the revolutionary melodrama The Robbers , causes a sensation in Mannheim at its first performance. Schiller, a military doctor at the time, is arrested for attending the performance without having permission to leave his regiment.
August 18 – William Blake marries Catherine Boucher at St Mary's Church, Battersea. In the same year, he meets his future patron, John Flaxman.
October 10 – Sarah Siddons makes a triumphant return to the Drury Lane Theatre in London, in the title role of David Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's Isabella, or, The Fatal Marriage.
unknown dates
*Charles Dibdin becomes joint manager of the Royal Circus, afterwards known as the Surrey Theatre, in London.
*The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries is completed, the largest literary compilation in China's history. The books are bound in 36,381 volumes with more than 79,000 chapters, containing about 2.3 million pages and 800 million Chinese characters. The bibliography omits some titles, which are included in the Annotated Bibliography of the Four Treasuries the following year.

Thomas Day – Reflections upon the Present State of England, and the Independence of America
William Gilpin – Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales
Edmond Malone – Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley
John Nichols – Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer
Thomas Pennant – The Journey from Chester to London
Isaac Reed – Biographia Dramatica
Joseph Ritson – Observations on the Three First Volumes of the History of English Poetry
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
*The Confessions
*Reveries of a Solitary Walker
J. Hector St. John – Letters from an American Farmer
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin – Tableau naturel des rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l'homme, et l'univers
Ignatius Sancho – Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African
Thomas Spence – The History of Crusonia on Robinson Crusoe's Island
Emanuel Swedenborg – Heaven and Hell
Thomas Tyrwhitt – A Vindication of the Appendix to the Poems, called Rowley's
Joseph Warton – An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope
Thomas Warton – ''An Enquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley''