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.

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 18 – 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)