1759 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1759.

Events

 * By January 15 – Voltaire's satirical novella Candide, ou l'Optimisme is published simultaneously in five countries.
 * January 15 – The British Museum opens in London.
 * March 5 – Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie is proscribed by the Vatican and (on March 8) temporarily suppressed by the French government. The ban is lifted in September to allow publication of a revised version.
 * July 27 – The earliest known professional performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet in North America (in Garrick's version) is given by the American Company in Philadelphia, with Lewis Hallam Jr. as Hamlet.
 * August 12 – In the Seven Years' War Battle of Kunersdorf, the German poet Major Ewald Christian von Kleist is fatally injured.
 * December – Laurence Sterne has the first two volumes of his comic metafictional novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman printed in York, in a shop owned by Ann Ward.
 * December 22 – The writer and critic William Warburton is nominated Anglican Bishop of Gloucester.
 * unknown dates
 * Rev. Hugh Blair begins to teach a course on the principles of literary composition at the University of Edinburgh, the first held in the field of English literature.
 * Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch becomes a professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Jena.

Fiction

 * Anonymous – The History of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House (dated 1760)
 * Sarah Fielding – The History of the Countess of Dellwyn
 * Samuel Johnson – The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (on Wikisource).
 * Gotthold Lessing – Fables
 * Madame Riccoboni – Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby
 * William Rider – Candidus (translation of Candide)
 * Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, vols 1–2
 * Voltaire – Candide

Drama

 * William Hawkins – Cymbeline (adapted from William Shakespeare)
 * Arthur Murphy – The Orphan of China
 * James Townley – High Life Below Stairs

Poetry

 * Samuel Butler – The Genuine Remains (collected works)
 * Edward Capell – Prolusions
 * John Gilbert Cooper – Ver-Vert (transl.)
 * William Mason – Caractacus
 * Augustus Montague Toplady – Poems on Sacred Subjects

Non-fiction

 * Franz Aepinus – Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi (An Attempt at a Theory of Electricity and Magnetism)
 * Edmund Burke – The Annual Register
 * Angélique du Coudray – Abrégé de l'art des accouchements (The Art of Obstetrics)
 * Alexander Gerard – An Essay on Taste
 * Oliver Goldsmith
 * The Bee (periodical solely by Goldsmith)
 * An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe
 * David Hume – The History of England, Under the House of Tudor
 * Richard Hurd – Moral and Political Dialogues
 * Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon – The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Written by Himself
 * Rai Chatar Man Kayath – Chahar Gulshan
 * William Robertson – The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James
 * Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments
 * Arthur Young – Reflections on the Present State of Affairs at Home and Abroad
 * Edward Young – Conjectures on Original Composition

Births

 * January 25 – Robert Burns, Scottish poet writing in Braid Scots and English (died 1796)
 * March 5 – John Jamieson, Scottish lexicographer (died 1838)
 * March 29 – Alexander Chalmers, Scottish biographer and editor (died 1834)
 * April 27 – Mary Wollstonecraft, English political writer and advocate of women's rights (died 1797)
 * May 4 (baptism) – Isabella Kelly, Scottish novelist and poet (died 1857)
 * June 17 – Helen Maria Williams, English novelist, poet and translator from French (died 1827)
 * October 13 – Mary Hays, English writer and advocate of women's rights (died 1843)
 * November 10 – Friedrich Schiller, German poet and dramatist (died 1805)
 * December 25 – Richard Porson, English classicist (died 1808)
 * unknown date – Deen Mahomet, author of first book in English by an Indian (died 1851)

Deaths

 * June 12 – William Collins, English poet (born 1721)
 * June 26 – Arthur Young, English religious writer and cleric (born 1693)
 * July 27 – Pierre Louis Maupertuis, French philosopher (born 1698)
 * July 29 – Kata Bethlen, Hungarian memoirist and correspondent (born 1700)
 * August 16 – Eugene Aram, English philologist and murderer, hanged (born 1704)
 * August 24 – Ewald Christian von Kleist, German poet (born 1715)
 * September 5 – Lauritz de Thurah, Danish architectural historian (born 1706)
 * October 7 – Joseph Ames, English bibliographer and antiquary (born 1680)
 * unknown date – Francis Coventry, English clergyman and novelist (born 1725)
 * probable – Anton Wilhelm Amo, West African-born German philosopher (born 1703)