1779 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1779.

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Events

• April 6 – The premiėre of Iphigenie auf Tauris by Johann Wolfgang Goethe is held at the private Ducal Palace in Weimar.^[1]
• October 8 – William Blake enrols as a student with the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House in London.^[2]

New books

Fiction

• Richard Graves – Columella
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi – Woldemar
• Ignacy Krasicki – Fables and Parables (Bajki i przypowieści)
• Nocturnal Revels
• Samuel Jackson Pratt as "Courtney Melmoth"
  • Shenstone-Green
  • The Tutor of Truth
• The Sorrows of Werther (anonymous translation of a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe work)

Children

• Joachim Heinrich Campe – Robinson der Jüngere (based on Defoe)

Drama

• Fanny Burney – The Witlings (unpublished)
• Hannah Cowley
  • Albina, Countess Raimond
  • Who's the Dupe?
• Richard Cumberland – Calypso
• Hugh Downman – Lucius Junius Brutus
• Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian – Les Deux Billets
• William Hodson – Zoraida
• Robert Jephson – The Law of Lombardy
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Nathan der Weise (published)
• Hannah More – The Fatal Falsehood
• Elizabeth Richardson – The Double Deception
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The Critic

Poetry

Main article: 1779 in poetry

• William Cowper and John Newton – Olney Hymns
• Robert Fergusson – Poems
• William Hayley – Epistle to Admiral Keppel
• Ann Murry – Poems
• Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Epístola de Jovino a Anfriso, escrita desde el Paular
• Leandro Fernandez de Moratín – La toma de Granada por los Reyes Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel
• Tomás de Iriarte – La música

Non-fiction

• John Abercrombie – The British Fruit Gardener and Art of Pruning
• Anna Barbauld – Lessons for Children
• James Burnett – Antient Metaphysics
• Edward Capell – Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare
• George Chalmers – Political Annals of the Present United Colonies
• Edward Gibbon – A Vindication of Some Passages in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• David Hume (died 1776; anonymously) – Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
• Samuel Johnson – Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets
• Vicessimus Knox – Essays
• Franz Mesmer – Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
• John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany
• Thomas Scott – The Force of Truth
• Horace Walpole – A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton

Births

• January 18 – Peter Mark Roget, English lexicographer (died 1869)
• March 1 – Gottfried Weber, German writer on music (died 1839)
• March 3 – Matthäus Casimir von Collin, Austrian poet and dramatist (died 1824)
• March 10 – Frances Trollope (born Frances Milton), English novelist and writer (died 1863)
• March 30 – Antoine Ó Raifteiri, Irish Gaelic poet (died 1835)
• May 2 – John Galt, Scottish novelist and entrepreneur (died 1839)^[3]
• May 28 – Thomas Moore, Irish poet and songwriter (died 1852)
• August 1 – Francis Scott Key, American poet (died 1843)
• September 10 – Alexander Voeykov, Russian poet (died 1839)
• November 14 – Adam Oehlenschläger, Danish Romantic poet and dramatist (died 1850)
• December 22 – Thomas Gaisford, English classicist (died 1855)
• December 31 – Horace (Horatio) Smith, English poet and novelist (died 1849)^[4]

Deaths

• January 20 – David Garrick, English dramatist, actor and impresario (born 1717)^[5]
• March 4 – Heinrich Leopold Wagner, German dramatist (born 1747)
• June 7 – William Warburton, English writer, critic and cleric (born 1698)
• June 10 – William Kenrick, English novelist, playwright and satirist (born c. 1725)
• July 10 – Jane Gomeldon, English essayist and writer of maxims (born c. 1720)^[6]
• July 21 – Caleb Fleming, English minister and pamphleteer (born 1698)^[7]
• November 16 – Pehr Kalm, Swedish/Finnish botanist, naturalist and travel writer (born 1716)
• December 22 – István Küzmics (Števan Küzmič), Hungarian writer in Prekmurje Slovene (Wendish) (born c. 1723)

References

1. Volker Schachenmayr (1996). Points of Connection Among Classical Statuary, the Grand Tour, and Stage Performance in the Age of Goethe. Stanford University. p. 210.
2. Blake. University of New Mexico, Department of English. 2006. p. 101.
3. The English Cyclopædia: A New Dictionary of Universal Knowledge. Bradbury and Evans. 1856. p. 22.
4. "Horace Smith | English writer". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
5. Greenway, Diana E., ed. (1999), "List 30: Prebendaries, Husthwaite", Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: Volume 6, York, London: Institute of Historical Research, pp. 81–82
6. Joseph Smith (1863). A Descriptive Catalogue of Friends' Books: Or Books Written by Members of the Society of Friends, Commonly Called Quakers, from Their First Rise to the Present Time, Interspersed with Critical Remarks, and Occasional Biographical Notices ... Joseph Smith. p. 848.
7. The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature. Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper. 1818. p. 412.