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.

Prose

 * John Armstrong as Launcelot Temple – Sketches, or, Essays on Various Subjects
 * Charlotte Lennox – Henrietta
 * Thomas Marryat – Therapeutics, or a New Practice of Physic (in Latin)
 * Madame Riccoboni – Histoire du marquis de Cressy
 * Horace Walpole
 * A Dialogue Between Two Great Ladies
 * Fugitive Pieces

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

 * William Blackstone – A Discourse on the Study of Law
 * John Brown – An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (see 1757)
 * 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
 * Robert Lowth – The Life of William of Wykeham
 * Thomas Marryat – Therapeutics, or a New Practice of Physic
 * 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
 * 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)
 * December 25 – James Hervey, English religious writer and cleric (born 1714)