# 1758 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1758.

## Events

* April 15 – Samuel Johnson begins publishing a series of essays, The Idler (1758–1760), in the Universal Chronicle.
* April 24 – Robert Dodsley and his brother James sign a contract with Edmund Burke to launch The Annual Register.
* April 27 – The French historian Jean-François Marmontel enters the service of Madame de Pompadour.
* July/August – The poet and children's writer Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her family move to Warrington in north-west England.
* October – Voltaire buys an estate at Ferney in eastern France.
* unknown date – The French mathematician and philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis moves to his final home in Basel, Switzerland.

## New books
### Fiction

* Charlotte Lennox – Henrietta
* Madame (Riccoboni) – Histoire du marquis de Cressy
* Horace Walpole – A Dialogue Between Two Great Ladies

### Drama

* John Cleland – Tombo-Chiqui, or, The American Savage (not produced)
* Denis Diderot – Le Père de famille
* Robert Dodsley – Cleone
* David Garrick – Florizel and Perdita
* John Home – Aegis
* Charlotte Lennox – Philander
* Arthur Murphy – The Upholsterer
* George Alexander Stevens – Albion Restored

### Poetry

* Mark Akenside – An Ode to the Country Gentlemen
* Anica Bošković – Dijalog
* John Gilbert Cooper – The Call of Aristippus
* Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim – Preussische Kriegslieder von einem Grenadier (Prussian War Songs of a Grenadier)
* Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas
* James Macpherson – The Highlander
* Heyat Mahmud – Āmbiyābāṇī; Bengali
* Thomas Parnell – Posthumous Works

### Non-fiction

* John Armstrong as Launcelot Temple – Sketches, or, Essays on Various Subjects
* William Blackstone – A Discourse on the Study of Law
* Rev. Dr. John Brown – An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (2nd volume)
* Andrés Marcos Burriel – Paleografía española
* Elizabeth Carter (translator) – All the Works of Epictetus Which Are Now Extant
* José Francisco de Isla – Historia del famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes
* Benjamin Franklin – Father Abraham's Sermon
* Oliver Goldsmith as "James Willington" – The Memoirs of a Protestant
* William Hawkins – Tracts in Divinity
* Claude Adrien Helvétius – De l'Esprit
* Henry Home – Historical Law-Tracts
* Carl Linnaeus – Systema Naturae (10th edition), Tomus I, Animalia
* Robert Lowth – The Life of William of Wykeham
* Thomas Marryat – Therapeutics, or a New Practice of Physic (original version, in Latin)
* Antoine-Joseph Pernety
** Dictionnaire mytho-hermétique, dans lequel on trouve les allégories fabuleuses des poètes, les métaphores, les énigmes et les termes barbares des philosophes hermétiques expliqués
** Les Fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées et réduites au même principe, avec une explication des hiéroglyphes et de la guerre de Troye
* Antoine Simon Le Page Du Pratz – Histoire de la Louisiane (History of Louisiana)
* Richard Price – A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals
* Emanuel Swedenborg
** Earths in the Universe
** Heaven and Hell
** New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine
** The Last Judgement
* Jonathan Swift – The History of the Last Four Years of the Queen
* Horace Walpole
** A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England
** Fugitive Pieces
* Arthur Young – The Theatre of the Present War in North America

## Births

* January 12 – Dmitry Gorchakov, Russian writer, dramatist and poet (died 1824)
* February 3
** Vasily Kapnist, Ukrainian poet and playwright (died 1823)
** Valentin Vodnik, Carniolan Slovene poet, writer and priest (died 1819)
* February 10 – Amalia Holst, German writer, intellectual, and feminist (died 1829)
* March 15 – Magdalene Sophie Buchholm, Norwegian poet (died 1826)
* April 30 – Jane West (Prudentia Homespun), English novelist and writer of conduct books (died 1852)
* October 16 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (died 1843)
* December 9 – Richard Colt Hoare, English antiquary, archeologist and traveler (died 1838)

## Deaths

* January 7 – Allan Ramsay the Elder, Scottish poet (born 1686)
* March 22 – Jonathan Edwards, American theologian and preacher (born 1703)
* October – Theophilus Cibber, English dramatist and actor (born 1703; lost at sea)
* October 27 bur. – Elizabeth Blackwell, Scottish botanic writer and illustrator (born 1707)
* December 25 – James Hervey, English religious writer and cleric (born 1714)