1764 in literature

Events

• January 19 – John Wilkes is expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel in an article criticizing King George III in The North Briton.
• February – Samuel Johnson co-founds The Club, a literary dining club in London.
• June 21 – The Quebec Gazette newspaper begins publication; its successor survives.
• October 15 – While visiting Rome, Edward Gibbon conceives the idea for The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter". Gibbon is at the Franciscan Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill, actually the site of the Temple of Juno.
• October 29 – The Hartford Courant newspaper is founded in Connecticut.
• December 24 – Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel, is published by his Strawberry Hill Press in England.

• The French scholar Jean-Jacques Barthélemy deciphers the Phoenician language using inscriptions on the Cippi of Melqart from Malta.
• Mme. Necker and Mlle. de Lespinasse establish literary salons in Paris

  New books

Fiction

• John Cleland – The Surprises of Love
• Phebe Gibbes
• *The History of Lady Louisa Stroud and the Honorable Miss Caroline Stretton
• *The Life and Adventures of Mr. Francis Clive
• Susannah Minifie – Family Pictures
• George Psalmanazar – Memoirs of ***, Commonly Known by the Name of George Psalamanazar
• James Ridley – The Tales of the Genii
• Horace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto

  Drama

• Samuel Foote – The Patron
• Antoine-Marin Lemierre – Idomne
• Arthur Murphy
• *No One's Enemy But His Own
• *What We Must All Come To
• Kane O'Hara – Midas
• Frances Sheridan – The Dupe
• Christopher Smart – Hannah
• Ramón de la Cruz – El petimetre

  Poetry

• Charles Churchill
• *The Candidate
• *The Duellist
• *The Farewell
• *Gotham
• *Independence
• *The Times
• John Gilbert Cooper – Poems
• Oliver Goldsmith – The Traveller
• James Grainger – The Sugar-Cane
• Johann Georg Jacobi – Foeiische Versuche
• Edward Jerningham – The Nun
• George Keate – The Ruins of Netley Abbey
• Mary Latter – Liberty and Interest: a Burlesque Poem on the Present Times
• William Mason – Poems
• William Williams Pantycelyn – Bywyd a Marwolaeth Theomemphus
• Christopher Smart – A Poetical Translation of the Fables of Phaedrus
• Thomas Warton – The Oxford Sausage

  Non-fiction

• David Erskine Baker – The Companion to the Play-house
• John Barrow – Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
• Cesare Beccaria – On Crimes and Punishments
• Charles Bonnet – Contemplation de la nature
• Oliver Goldsmith – An History of England
• Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury – The Life of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury
• Immanuel Kant – Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
• Gottfried Leibniz – New Essays on Human Understanding
• John Newton – An Authentic Narrative of Some Remarkable And Interesting Particulars in the Life of ------ Communicated, in a Series of Letters, to the Reverend T. Haweiss
• Francisco Mariano Nipho – La nación española defendida de los insultos del Pensador y sus secuaces
• Anthony Purver – A New and Literal Translation of all the Books of the Old and New Testament
• Thomas Reid – An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense
• William Shenstone – Works
• Voltaire
• *Dictionnaire philosophique
• *Commentaires sur Corneille
• Johann Joachim Winckelmann – Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums''

  Births

• January 23 – Morris Birkbeck, American writer and social reformer
• February 11 – Joseph Chénier, French poet
• April 29 – Ann Hatton, English novelist
• June 23 – Gabriel-Marie Legouvé, French poet and dramatist
• June 19 – John Barrow, English writer, geographer and linguist
• July 4 – Prokop František Šedivý, Czech playwright, actor, and translator
• July 9 – Ann Radcliffe, English Gothic novelist
• October 19 – Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy, French dramatist
• November 1 – Frederic Reynolds, English dramatist
• December 3 – Mary Lamb, English miscellanist and co-author with brother Charles Lamb

  Deaths

• April 17 – Johann Mattheson, German writer, lexicographer and musician
• June 18 – Christmas Samuel, Welsh-language writer and Independent minister
• July 30 – Philipp Hafner, Austrian writer of farce
• September 11 – Countess Dash, French writer
• September 23 – Robert Dodsley, English miscellanist and bookseller
• October 23 – Pierre-Charles Roy, French poet and librettist
• November 1 – Agustín de Montiano y Luyando, Spanish dramatist
• November 4 – Charles Churchill, English poet and satirist
• December 15 – Robert Lloyd, English poet and satirist