1781 in literature

Events

• March 27 – George Crabbe writes to Edmund Burke, enclosing examples of his work. The outcome is the publication of Crabbe's poem The Library.
• August 5 – Antonín Strnad completes an inventory of the contents of the Clementinum in Prague, which becomes a national library.

• Rudolf Erich Raspe publishes "M-h-s-nsche Geschichten" in the Berlin humor magazine Vade mecum für lustige Leute, the first appearance of Baron Munchausen in fiction.

  New books

Fiction

• Robert Bage – Mount Henneth
• Christoph Friedrich Bretzner – Belmont und Constanze
• William Combe – Letters of an Italian Nun and an English Gentleman
• Eugenio Espejo – La ciencia blancardina
• Benjamin Franklin – A Letter To A Royal Academy
• Charles Johnstone – The History of John Juniper
• Henry Mackenzie – Julia de Roubignei
• Glocester Ridley – Melanpus
• Anna Seward – Monody on Major André

  Children

• Mrs. Barbauld – Hymns in Prose for Children
• Joachim Heinrich Campe – Die Entdeckung von Amerika

  Drama

• Miles Peter Andrews – Dissipation
• Frances Brooke – The Siege of Sinope
• Elizabeth Craven – The Miniature Picture
• John Delap – The Royal Supplicants
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Iphigenia in Tauris
• Thomas Holcroft – Duplicity
• Elizabeth Inchbald – Polygamy
• Robert Jephson – The Count of Narbonne
• John O'Keeffe – The Agreeable Surprise
• Samuel Jackson Pratt – The Fair Circassian
• Friedrich Schiller – The Robbers
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• *The Critic
• *A Trip to Scarborough

  Poetry

• William Cowper – Anti-Thelyphthora
• George Crabbe – The Library
• Maria De Fleury – Poems, Occasioned by the Confinement and Acquittal of the Right Honourable Lord George Gordon, President of the Protestant Association
• Santa Rita Durão – Caramuru
• Anne Francis – A Poetical Translation of the Song of Solomon
• Philip Freneau – The British Prison-Ship
• William Hayley – The Triumphs of Temper
• George Keate – Works
• Samuel Jackson Pratt – Sympathy

  Non-fiction

• Maria De Fleury – Unrighteous Abuse Detected and Chastised
• Mary Deverell – Sermons on the Following Subjects...
• Edward Gibbon – Volumes II and III of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Henry Home – Loose Hints Upon Education
• Samuel Johnson
• *The Beauties of Johnson
• *Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
• Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason
• John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in Italy
• John Newton – Cardiphonia
• John Nichols – Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth
• Magister Pianco – Der Rosenkreutzer in seiner Blösse
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Essai sur l'origine des langues

  Births

• January 26 – Ludwig Achim von Arnim, German poet and novelist
• January 30 – Adelbert von Chamisso, German poet and botanist
• February 26 – Peter Andresen Oelrichs, Heligoland-born lexicographer
• March 17 – Ebenezer Elliott, English poet
• May 14 – Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer, German historian
• June 12 – Christian Isobel Johnstone, Scottish journalist and novelist
• November 6 – Lucy Aikin, English historical writer
• December 6 – Charlotte von Ahlefeld, German novelist
• December 11 – David Brewster, Scottish scientist and writer

  Deaths

• February 15 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German philosopher and dramatist
• February 24 – Edward Capell, English Shakespeare scholar
• March 1 – Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, French historian, classicist and lexicographer
• March 17 – Johannes Ewald, Danish dramatist and poet
• May 8 – Richard Jago, English poet and cleric
• June 24 – Anna Miller, English poet and salon hostess
• November 2 – José Francisco de Isla, Spanish satirist
• November 4 – Johann Nikolaus Götz, German poet
• December 7 – Judith Madan, English poet