1787 in literature

Events

• January 15 – Ann Ward marries William Radcliffe, gaining the surname by which she will be known as a writer of Gothic novels.
• April 16 – Royall Tyler's The Contrast becomes the first comedy written by an American citizen to be professionally produced, at the John Street Theatre (Manhattan).
• April 17 – The Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is published by William Creech. It includes a Burns portrait by Alexander Nasmyth. The poet has great social success in the city's literary circles; 16-year-old Walter Scott meets him at the house of Adam Ferguson.
• June 1 – King George III of Great Britain issues a Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice, which can be used to prosecute obscene publications.
• June 27 – Just before midnight, Edward Gibbon completes The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the small summerhouse in his garden in Lausanne, Switzerland.
• July – Friedrich Schiller arrives in Weimar.
• November 21 – François-Joseph Talma makes his professional stage debut at the Comédie-Française as Seide, in Voltaire's Mahomet.
• December 4 – Robert Burns meets Agnes Maclehose at a party given by Miss Erskine Nimmo.

New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Bonhôte – Olivia, or, The Deserted Bride
• Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai – Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Sorrows of Young Werther
• Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse – Ardinghello and die glückseligen Inseln
• Elizabeth Helme – Louisa; or the Cottage on the Moor
• Johann Karl August Musäus – Volksmärchen der Deutschen
• Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins – The Victim of Fancy
• Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken – ''Abraham Blankaart''

Children

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – ''Fanfan et Lolotte, ou Histoire de deux enfants abandonnés dans une île déserte''

Drama

• Pierre Beaumarchais – Tarare
• George Colman the Elder –The Village Lawyer
• George Colman the Younger – Inkle and Yarico
• Richard Cumberland – The Country Attorney
• Germaine de Staël – Jeanne Grey
• Thomas Holcroft – Seduction
• Elizabeth Inchbald
• * All on a Summer's Day
• * The Midnight Hour
• * Such Things Are
• Harriet Lee – The New Peerage
• Andrew Macdonald –Vimonda
• Friedrich Schiller – Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien
• Royall Tyler – ''The Contrast''

Non-fiction

• Thomas Best – A Concise Treatise on the Art of Angling
• Mathurin Jacques Brisson – Pesanteur Spécifique des Corps
• Ottobah Cugoano – Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species
• John Fenn – The Paston Letters
• John Hawkins – Life of Samuel Johnson
• 'Publius' – The Federalist papers
• Scots Musical Museum, vol. 1
• Mary Wollstonecraft – ''Thoughts on the Education of Daughters''

Births

• February 2 – Charles Etienne Boniface, French music teacher, playwright and journalist
• February 17 – George Mogridge ("Old Humphrey"), English children's writer and poet
• February 23 – Emma Willard, American teacher and writer
• March 7 – George Bethune English, American explorer and writer
• April 26 – Ludwig Uhland, German poet
• May 29 – Konstantin Batyushkov, Russian poet, essayist and translator
• July 9 – Taliesin Williams, Welsh poet and author
• September 13 – John Adamson, English antiquary and expert on Portuguese
• November 4 – Edmund Kean, English actor
• November 15 – Richard Henry Dana Sr., American poet, critic and lawyer
• November 21 – Bryan Procter, English poet
• December 16 – Mary Russell Mitford, English novelist

Deaths

• April 1 – Floyer Sydenham, English classical scholar and translator
• April 2 – Francisco Javier Clavijero, Mexican-born historian
• May 4 – Philip Skelton, Irish clergyman and writer
• June 19 – John Brown, Scottish theologian
• October 28 – Johann Karl August Musäus, German satirist and children's writer
• October 30 – Ferdinando Galiani, Italian economist
• November 3 – Robert Lowth, English poet, grammarian and bishop
• December 18 – Soame Jenyns, English poet and essayist