1786 in literature

Events

• January 19 – Franziska Stading plays the female lead in Gustav Vasa at the Royal Swedish Opera.
• July 31 – Scottish poet Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is published by John Wilson in Kilmarnock in 612 copies. The volume proves so popular that Burns abandons his plans to emigrate to Jamaica on September 1 for a post as a bookkeeper on a slave plantation and on November 27–28 journeys on a borrowed pony from Mossgiel Farm for his first visit to Edinburgh. Two weeks later he extemporises his "", which is first published on December 20 in the Caledonian Mercury.
• September–December – Goethe undertakes his Italian Journey.
• November – Boydell Shakespeare Gallery inaugurated in London.

  New books

Fiction

• William Thomas Beckford – Vathek
• James Boswell – Dorado, a Spanish Tale
• Harriet Lee – The Errors of Innocence
• Isabelle de Montolieu – Caroline de Lichtfield, ou Mémoires extraits des papiers d'une famille prussienne
• André-Robert Andréa de Nerciat – Le Diable au Corps
• Friedrich Schiller – The Ghost-Seer

  Children

• Mrs. Trimmer
• *Fabulous Histories
• *A Description of a Set of Prints of Scripture History
• Rudolf Erich Raspe
• *Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages, and Sporting Adventures of Baron Munnikhouson, commonly pronounced Munchausen
• *Translated into German from English by Gottfried August Bürger – The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchhausen

  Drama

• Tituš Brezovački – Sveti Aleksij
• John Burgoyne – The Heiress and Richard Coeur de Lion
• Germaine de Staël – Sophie
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Iphigenia in Tauris
• Elizabeth Inchbald – The Widow’s Vow
• John O'Keeffe – Love in a Camp

  Poetry

• Robert Burns – Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
• Helen Maria Williams – Poems

  Non-fiction

• Thomas Clarkson – An Essay of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African
• John Gilchrist – A Dictionary English and Hindoostanee. To which Is Prefixed a Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language
• William Herschel – Catalogue of One Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars
• Immanuel Kant – Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft
• Richard Payne Knight – An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus...
• Friedrich Schiller – Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre
• Emanuel Swedenborg – Divine Love and Wisdom
• Hester Thrale – Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson
• John Horne Tooke – 'Epea Pteroenta' – The Diversions of Purley

  Births

• February 3 – Wilhelm Gesenius, German philologist and theologian
• February 11 – James Cowles Prichard, English ethnologist and psychiatrist
• February 24 – Wilhelm Grimm, German philologist and folklorist
• May 10 – Esther Copley, English children's writer and tractarian
• May 12 – Jean-François Barrière, French historian
• June 20 – Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, French poet
• June 26 – Sunthorn Phu, Thai poet
• August 25 – James Silk Buckingham, English journalist and travel writer
• October 23 – Barron Field, English-born Australian poet
• December 6 – Caroline Anne Southey, English poet
• Unknown date
• *Helena Charlotta Åkerhielm, Swedish dramatist and translator
• *Eaton Stannard Barrett, Irish satirical poet and novelist

  Deaths

• January 4 – Moses Mendelssohn, German philosopher of the Haskalah or Jewish enlightenment.
• January 19 – John Duncombe, English writer and cleric
• March 11 – Jacobus Bellamy, Dutch poet
• April 13 – Jan Tomáš Kuzník, Czech musician and poet
• May 4 – Johann Kaspar Füssli, artist, writer and publisher
• August 15 – Thomas Tyrwhitt, English classicist and critic
• November 30 – Thomas Thistlewood, English-born Jamaican diarist
• December 26 – Gasparo Gozzi, Italian dramatist and critic