1777 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1777.

Events

• February 8 - Thomas Chatterton's Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth Century are published anonymously and posthumously in London, edited by the scholar Thomas Tyrwhitt who at this time believes them to be the genuine work of a medieval monk transcribed by Chatterton.
• March - Fanny Burney is introduced to Samuel Johnson by her father.
• April 1 - Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's play Sturm und Drang is premiered by the Seyler theatrical company in Leipzig, giving its name to the whole Sturm und Drang movement in German literature.
• April 12 - Poet and grammarian Robert Lowth is nominated Bishop of London.
• May 8 - First performance of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy of manners The School for Scandal at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
• October - First appearance of James Boswell's essays as The Hypochondriak in The London Magazine.

New books

• Frances Brooke - The Excursion
• Phoebe Gibbes - Modern Seduction
• Henry Mackenzie - Julia de Roubigne
• Samuel Jackson Pratt
  • Charles and Charlotte
  • (as "Courtney Melmoth") Travels for the Heart
• Clara Reeve (anonymously) - The Champion of Virtue
• Lady Mary Walker
  • Letters from the Duchesse de Crui
  • Memoirs of the Marchioness de Louvoi

New drama

• Charles Dibdin - The Quaker
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Iphigenie auf Tauris
• John O'Keeffe - The Shamrock
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan - The School for Scandal
• Nicolás Fernández de Moratín - Guzman el Bueno
• Friedrich Maximilian Klinger - Sturm und Drang

New poetry

Main article: 1777 in poetry

• Thomas Chatterton - Poems
• William Combe
  • The Diaboliad
  • The First of April
• Thomas Day - The Desolation of America
• William Dodd - Thoughts in Prison
• William Roscoe - Mount Pleasant
• Thomas Warton - Poems
• Paul Whitehead - Poems
• Nicolás Fernández de Moratín - Las naves de Cortés destruidas

Non-fiction

• Hugh Blair - Sermons
• Jacques-François Blondel - Cours d'architecture ou traité de la décoration, distribution et constructions des bâtiments contenant les leçons données en 1750, et les années suivantes, vol. 9
• Edmund Burke - Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol
• James Cook - A Voyage Toward the South Pole
• John Howard - The State of the Prisons in England and Wales
• David Hume - The Life of David Hume
• Masons von Koeppen and von Hymnen - Crata Pepoa oder Einweihungen in der alten geheimen Gesellschaft der egyptischen Priester
• Hannah More - Essays
• Maurice Morgann - An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff
• Joseph Priestley
  • Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit
  • The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated
• Isaac Reed - The Repository
• William Robertson - The History of America
• Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield - Characters
• Antonio de Campmany - Filosofía de la elocuencia
• Nicolás Fernández de Moratín - Carta histórica sobre el origen y progresos de las fiestas de toros en España
• Johannes Nikolaus Tetens - Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung

Births

• February – James Johnson, Irish surgeon and medical writer (died 1845)
• February 12 – Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, German Romantic novelist (died 1843)
• February 16 – Maria Hack, English children's writer (died 1844)
• July 27 – Thomas Campbell, Scottish poet (died 1844)

Deaths

• February 3 – Hugh Kelly, Irish poet and dramatist (born 1739)
• September 24 (bur.) – James Fortescue, English poet (born 1716)
• October 12 (October 1 O.S.) – Alexander Sumarokov, Russian poet and dramatist (born 1717)
• October 21 – Samuel Foote, English dramatist (born 1720)