1783 in literature
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1783.Events
- April 14 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's drama Nathan der Weise receives its first professional performance, in Berlin.
- May 6 – William Cobbett arrives in London to work, and later in the year joins the 54th Regiment of Foot.
- September – Friedrich Schiller, having left Stuttgart for Weimar to avoid persecution, becomes resident dramatist at Mannheim.
Uncertain date
Fiction
- Rhijnvis Feith – Julia
- Thomas Holcroft – The Family Picture
- Sophia Lee – The Recess
- Clara Reeve – The Two Mentors
Children
- Thomas Day – The History of Sandford and Merton
- Ellenor Fenn – Cobwebs to Catch Flies
- Dorothy Kilner – The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse
- Mary Ann Kilner
- *A Course of Lectures for Sunday Evenings. Containing religious advice to young persons
- * The Adventures of a Pincushion''
Drama
- Vittorio Alfieri – Agamennone
- Frances Brooke – Roxina
- Hannah Cowley – Which is the Man?
- Richard Cumberland – The Mysterious Husband
- John O'Keeffe – The Poor Soldier
Poetry
- Lady Anne Barnard – Auld Robin Gray
- William Blake – Poetical Sketches
- Judith Cowper – The Progress of Poetry
- George Crabbe – The Village
- Joseph Ritson – A Select Collection of English Songs
- John Wolcot – More Lyric Odes, to the Royal Academicians
Non-fiction
- James Beattie – Dissertations Moral and Critical
- William Beckford – Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents
- Hugh Blair – Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
- Edmund Burke – Letter on the Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics
- Adam Ferguson – History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic
- William Godwin – Life of Lord Chatham
- Immanuel Kant – Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science
- Vicesimus Knox – Elegant Extracts
- Mémoires secrets
- Moses Mendelssohn – Jerusalem
- Ezra Stiles – The United States elevated to Glory and Honor
- Horace-Bénédict de Saussure – Essai sur l'hygrométrie
Births
- January 23 – Stendhal, French novelist
- April 3 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist and politician
- May 14 – Samuel Lee, English orientalist and linguist
- September 23 – Jane Taylor, English poet and novelist
- December 10 – María Bibiana Benítez, Puerto Rican poet and playwright
Deaths
- January 2 – Johann Jakob Bodmer, Swiss journalist and critic writing in German
- April 17 – Louise d'Epinay French writer and salon hostess
- September 6 – Anna Williams, Welsh-born poet
- October 10 – Henry Brooke, Irish novelist, playwright, and poet
- October 29 – Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician and philosopher
- November 3 – Charles Collé, French dramatist and songwriter
- November 23 – Ann Eliza Bleecker, American poet, novelist and letter writer
