1779 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1779. Events April 6 – The premiėre of Iphigenie auf Tauris by Johann Wolfgang Goethe is held at the private Ducal Palace in Weimar. October 8 – William Blake enrols as a student with the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House in London. 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Goethe work) Children Joachim Heinrich Campe – Robinson der Jüngere (based on Defoe) Drama Fanny Burney – The Witlings (unpublished) Hannah Cowley Albina, Countess Raimond Who's the Dupe Richard Cumberland – Calypso Hugh Downman – Lucius Junius Brutus Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian – Les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) Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The Critic 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) 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