1776 in literature

Events

• January 8 – The English actor John Philip Kemble makes his stage début, as Theodosius in Nathaniel Lee's eponymous tragedy, at Wolverhampton, England, with the Crump and Chamberlain company.

• David Hume, shortly before his death on August 25, completes the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, on which he has been working since 1750.
• The Wenyuan Chamber is built in China as an imperial library in the Forbidden City of Beijing.

  New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Griffith – The Story of Lady Juliana Harley
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi – Edward Allwill's Briefsammlung
• Ignacy Krasicki – The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom
• Samuel Jackson Pratt – The Pupil of Pleasure, or, The New System Illustrated

  Drama

• George Edward Ayscough – Semiramis
• Hannah Cowley – The Runaway
• Samuel Foote – The Bankrupt
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Stella
• Friedrich Maximilian Klinger – Sturm und Drang
• Johann Anton Leisewitz – Julius of Taranto
• Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz – The Soldiers
• Heinrich Leopold Wagner – Die Kindermörderin
• Lope de Vega – Obras sueltas

  Poetry

• James Beattie – Poems
• Richard Graves – Euphrosyne
• Hannah More – Sir Eldred of the Bower, and The Bleeding Rock
• Jonathan Richardson – Morning Thoughts
• John Scott – Amwell
• Augustus Montague Toplady – Psalms and Hymns
• William Whitehead – Variety
• Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Jovino a sus amigos de Salamanca

  Non-fiction

• John Adams – Thoughts on Government
• James Beattie – Essays
• Jeremy Bentham – Fragment on Government
• Charles Burney – A General History of Music
• George Campbell – The Philosophy of Rhetoric
• David Dalrymple – Annals of Scotland
• Edward Gibbon – The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 1
• Oliver Goldsmith – A Survey of Experimental Philosophy
• Sir John Hawkins – A General History of the Science and Practice of Music
• David Herd – Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs
• Soame Jenyns – A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion
• Thomas Paine
• *Common Sense
• *The American Crisis
• Richard Price – Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty
• Adam Smith – An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

  Births

• January – Frances Burney, English dramatist
• January 17 – Jane Porter, Scottish novelist and dramatist
• January 24 – E. T. A. Hoffmann, German fantasy and horror writer
• February 12 – Richard Mant, English writer and cleric
• March 9 – Archibald Bell, Scottish lawyer and miscellanist
• April 13 – Wilhelm von Schütz, German author and playwright
• July 1 – Sophie Gay, French author
• September 21 – John Fitchett, English epic poet
• September 27 – Maria Versfelt, Dutch actress and memoirist
• November 16 – Mary Matilda Betham, English diarist, scholar and poet
• November 20 – William Blackwood, Scottish publisher

  Deaths

• April 29 – Edward Wortley Montagu, English travel writer
• May 23 – Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse, French salonnière
• June 2 – Robert Foulis, Scottish art critic and publisher
• August 25 – David Hume, Scottish philosopher, historian and economist