# 1757 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1757.

## Events

* February 16 – Jonathan Edwards becomes President of the institution that will become Princeton University.
* May 3 – The Irish-born actress Peg Woffington, playing Rosalind in As You Like It, suffers a stroke on stage at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London and never acts again.
* May 6 – Asylum confinement of Christopher Smart: The poet Christopher Smart is confined to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London.
* May – The Baskerville typeface, designed by John Baskerville of Birmingham, England, is first used in a wove paper quarto edition of Virgil (Publii Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Æneis).
* September – Pierre-Augustin Caron begins using the name Beaumarchais.
* September 9 – The Parlement of Toulouse orders a public burning of Jesuit author Hermann Busenbaum's Medulla Theologiae Morales because of its treatment of the subject of regicide.
* December 11 – On the death of Colley Cibber as Poet Laureate of Great Britain, the post is declined by Thomas Gray and passes to William Whitehead.
* unknown dates
** Angelo Maria Bandini is appointed librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence.
** Robert Raikes becomes proprietor of the Gloucester Journal.
** Horace Walpole begins the Strawberry Hill Press.
** Thomas Warton is appointed Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.

## New books
### Prose

* John Brown – An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times
* Edmund Burke – A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
* John Dalrymple – An Essay Towards a General History of Feudal Property in Great Britain
* Samuel Derrick (probable compiler) – Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (1st edn)
* Adam Ferguson – The Morality of Stage-Plays Seriously Considered
* Sarah Fielding – The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia
* Edward and Elizabeth Griffith – A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances vols. i – ii.
* David Hume – The Natural History of Religion
* Soame Jenyns – A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil
* Richard Price – Review of the Principal Questions in Morals
* Madame Riccoboni – Lettres de Mistriss Fanny Butlerd.
* Tobias Smollett – A Complete History of England
* Horace Walpole – A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking
* William Warburton – Remarks upon Mr. David Hume's Essay on the Natural History of Religion
* Joseph Warton – Essay on Pope
* John Wesley – The Doctrine of Original Sin

### Drama

* Anonymous – The Taxes
* Phanuel Bacon – Humorous Ethics, or an Attempt to Cure the Vices and Follies of the Age by a Method Entirely New (5 plays)
* Denis Diderot – Le Fils naturel
* Samuel Foote – The Author
* David Garrick – Lilliput
* John Home – Douglas
* Tobias Smollett – The Reprisal

### Poetry

* Robert Andrews – Eidyllia
* Cornelius Arnold – Poems
* Samuel Boyce – Poems
* John Gilbert Cooper as "Aristippus" – Epistles to the Great
* John Duncombe – The Feminead (answer to 1754's Feminiad)
* William Duncombe – The Works of Horace in English Verse (various translators).
* John Dyer – The Fleece
* Carlo Gozzi – La tartana degli influssi per l'anno 1756
* Thomas Gray – Odes
* William Thompson – Poems
* William Wilkie – Epigoniad
* Edward Young – The Works of the Author of Night Thoughts

## Births

* February 1 – John Philip Kemble, English actor (died 1823)
* February 6 – Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Polish poet and dramatist (died 1841)
* April 9 – Wojciech Bogusławski, Polish actor, director and dramatist (died 1829)
* July 21 – Basilius von Ramdohr, German journalist and critic (died 1822)
* November 9 – William Sotheby, English poet and translator (died 1833)
* November 13 – Archibald Alison, Scottish essayist and cleric (died 1839)
* November 28 – William Blake, English poet and artist (died 1827)
* November 27 (possible year) – Mary Robinson (née Darby), English poet, actress and royal mistress (died 1800)
* December 4 – Charles Burney, English classicist and book thief (died 1817)
* Unknown date – Giovanni Antonio Galignani, Italian publisher (died 1821)

## Deaths

* January 9 – Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, French dramatist and author (born 1657)
* January 19 – Thomas Ruddiman, Scottish classical scholar, editor, printer and librarian (born 1674)
* March 1 – Edward Moore, English dramatist (born 1712)
* March 8 – Thomas Blackwell, Scottish classical scholar (born 1701)
* August 28 – David Hartley, English philosopher and psychologist (born 1705)
* December 11
** Colley Cibber, English dramatist, actor-manager and Poet Laureate of Great Britain (born 1671)
** Edmund Curll, English bookseller and publisher (born 1675)
* December 15 (burial) – John Dyer, a Welsh poet, painter and Anglican cleric (born 1699)

## In literature

* John Dickson Carr – The Demoniacs (1962)
* James Fenimore Cooper – The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826)