# 1781 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1781.

## 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.
* unknown date – Rudolf Erich Raspe (anonymously) publishes "M-h-s-nsche Geschichten" ("M-h-s-n Stories") in the Berlin humor magazine Vade mecum für lustige Leute ("Handbook for Fun-loving People"), 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 (Discovery of America)

### Drama

* Miles Peter Andrews – Dissipation
* Frances Brooke – The Siege of Sinope
* Hannah Cowley – The World as it Goes
* Elizabeth Craven – The Miniature Picture
* John Delap – The Royal Suppliants
* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Iphigenia in Tauris (revised version)
* 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 (Die Räuber, published)
* Richard Brinsley Sheridan
** The Critic (published)
** 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 (Hans Heinrich von Ecker und Eckhoffen) – 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 (died 1831)
* January 30 – Adelbert von Chamisso, German poet and botanist (died 1838)
* February 26 – Peter Andresen Oelrichs, Heligoland-born lexicographer (died 1869)
* March 17 – Ebenezer Elliott, English poet (died 1849)
* May 14 – Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer, German historian (died 1873)
* June 12 (probable) – Christian Isobel Johnstone, Scottish journalist and novelist (died 1857)
* November 3 – Sarah Elizabeth Utterson, English translator and short story writer (died 1851)
* November 6 – Lucy Aikin (Mary Godolphin), English historical writer (died 1864)
* November 29 – Andrés Bello, Venezuelan polymath (died 1865)
* December 6 – Charlotte von Ahlefeld, German novelist (died 1849)
* December 11 – David Brewster, Scottish scientist and writer (died 1868)

## Deaths

* February 15 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German philosopher and dramatist (born 1729)
* February 22 – Anna Magdalena Godiche, Danish book printer and publisher (born 1721)
* February 24 – Edward Capell, English Shakespeare scholar (born 1713)
* March 1 – Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, French historian, classicist and lexicographer (born 1697)
* March 17 – Johannes Ewald, Danish dramatist and poet (born 1743)
* May 8 – Richard Jago, English poet and cleric (born 1715)
* June 24 – Anna Miller, English poet and salon hostess (born 1741)
* September 11 – Johann August Ernesti, German theologian and philologist (born 1707)
* November 2 – José Francisco de Isla, Spanish satirist (born 1703)
* November 4 – Johann Nikolaus Götz, German poet (born 1721)
* December 7 – Judith Madan, English poet (born 1702)