1789 in literature

Events

• January 21 – William Hill Brown's anonymous sentimental epistolary novel The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature, usually considered the first American novel, is published in Boston.
• February 7 – Première of John Philip Kemble's production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus with himself in the title rôle and his sister Sarah Siddons as Volumnia, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
• December – Première of Olympe de Gouges's abolitionist play Zamore et Mirza as L'Esclavage des nègres ; shut down after three performances.
• December 28 – Première of Anton Tomaž Linhart's comedy Županova Micka, the first theatrical work in the Slovene language.
• Publication in Calcutta of Sir William Jones's Śacontalā, or the fatal ring: an Indian drama, a translation of Kālidāsa's 4th/5th century play Abhijñānaśākuntalam, the first translation of a classical Indian drama into a Western language.
• Robert Burns is appointed an exciseman in Scotland.
• Tomás António Gonzaga is arrested for complicity in the Inconfidência Mineira in Brazil.
• Friedrich Schiller is appointed professor of history and philosophy at Jena.
• The Children's Magazine, the first American periodical for children, is published in Hartford, Connecticut. It lasts only three months.

  New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Bonhôte – Darnley Vale, or, Emelia Fitzroy
• William Hill Brown – The Power of Sympathy.
• Richard Cumberland – Arundel
• Ann Radcliffe – The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne
• Friedrich Schiller – The Ghost-Seer, publication concluded
• James White – Earl Strongbow

  Children

• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Petit Jacques et Georgette, ou les Petits montagnards auvergnats

  Drama

• Elizabeth Inchbald – The Married Man
• Ann Yearsley – Earl Goodwin

  Poetry

• William Blake – Songs of Innocence
• William Lisle Bowles – Sonnets
• Erasmus Darwin – The Loves of the Plants

  Non-fiction

• Jeremy Bentham – An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
• Olaudah Equiano – The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
• Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès – What Is the Third Estate?

  Births

• January 11 – John Payne Collier, English Shakespearean critic and forger
• May 28 – Bernhard Severin Ingemann, Danish historical novelist, playwright and poet
• September 1 – Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Irish novelist and literary hostess
• November 15 – James Scholefield, English classical scholar
• September 15 – James Fenimore Cooper, American novelist
• December 28 – Catharine Sedgwick, American novelist

  Deaths

• January 21 – Baron d'Holbach, German-born French author, philosopher and encyclopedist
• January 23 – John Cleland, English novelist, biographer and translator
• May 21 – Sir John Hawkins, English writer and biographer
• June 28 – John Walters, Welsh poet
• October 19 – Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken, Dutch poet and playwright