1767 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1767.

Events

 * January 29 – The former watchmaker and entrepreneur Pierre Beaumarchais has his first full-length drama, Eugénie, premièred at the Comédie-Française. Revised in two days, it establishes his reputation in this field.
 * February – King George III of Great Britain requests an introduction to Samuel Johnson from his librarian, Frederick Augusta Barnard. They meet in the library of the Queen's House.
 * April 24 – First professional performance of a play by an American, The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey (died 1763), at the new Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia with Lewis Hallam Jr. in a leading rôle.
 * December 7 – John Street Theatre (Manhattan), the first permanent theater in New York City, is opened by David Douglass with a performance of The Beaux' Stratagem.
 * Construction of Teatro Real Coliseo de Carlos III de Aranjuez, the first enclosed theatre in Spain, begins.
 * Richard Price's volume of sermons, Four Dissertations, is published by Andrew Millar and Thomas Cadell in London, and he joins the "Bowood circle", a group of liberal intellectuals around William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, at Bowood House in Wiltshire (England) and corresponds with Benjamin Franklin.
 * Publication of the Epistles and Book of Revelation in Manx as Sceeuyn Paul yn Ostyl gys ny Romanee completes the first translation of the New Testament into that language.
 * Publication of the first secular prose book in any of the Sorbian languages by Jurij Mjeń.

Fiction

 * James Boswell – Dorando
 * Phebe Gibbes – The Woman of Fashion
 * Hugh Kelly – Memoirs of a Magdalen
 * Susannah Minifie – Barford Abbey
 * Frances Sheridan
 * Conclusion of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (posthumous)
 * The History of Nourjahad
 * Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman vol. ix
 * Unca Eliza Winkfield (pseudonym) – The Female American
 * Arthur Young – The Adventures of Emmera

Drama

 * Pierre Beaumarchais – Eugénie
 * Richard Bentley – Philodamus
 * Isaac Bickerstaffe – Lace in the City
 * George Colman the Elder
 * The English Merchant
 * The Oxonian in Town
 * David Garrick – Cymon
 * Hall Hartson – The Countess of Salisbury
 * Thomas Hull – The Perplexities
 * William Kenrick – The Widowed Wife
 * Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Minna von Barnhelm
 * Arthur Murphy – The School for Guardians

Poetry

 * Michael Bruce – Elegy Written in Spring
 * Francis Fawkes – Partridge-Shooting
 * Oliver Goldsmith, ed. – The Beauties of English Poesy
 * Richard Jago – Edge-Hill
 * Henry Jones – Kew Garden
 * Christopher Smart (translation) – The Works of Horace, Translated into Verse

Non-fiction

 * John Byrom – The Universal English Short-hand
 * William Duff – An Essay on Original Genius
 * Richard Farmer – An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare
 * Adam Ferguson – An Essay on the History of Civil Society
 * Baron d'Holbach, Paul Henry Thiry – Christianisme dévoilé
 * Catharine Macaulay – Loose Remarks on Mr. Hobbes's Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society (on Hobbes's 1651 work)
 * Moses Mendelssohn – Phädon
 * Joseph Priestley – The History and Present State of Electricity
 * William Warburton – Sermons and Discourses
 * Arthur Young – The Farmer's Letters to the People of England

Births

 * January 1 – Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish novelist (died 1849)
 * February 4 – Andrew Marschalk, American printer (died 1838)
 * February 6 – Saul Ascher, German political writer and translator (died 1822)
 * March 1 – Alexander Balfour, Scottish novelist, short-story writer and poet (died 1829)
 * April 9 – Joseph Fiévée, French journalist, essayist, novelist and dramatist (died 1839)
 * April 24 – Dorothy Ripley, English missionary and reformist writer (died 1832)
 * September 6 – Thomas Bayly Howell, English legal writer (died 1815)
 * September 8 – August Wilhelm Schlegel, German poet and translator (died 1845)
 * September 10 – Melchiorre Gioia, Italian philosophical writer (died 1829)
 * October 25 – Benjamin Constant, Swiss-French novelist (died 1830)
 * November 26 (bapt.) – Elizabeth Bentley, English poet (died 1839)
 * December 8 – Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, French poet and composer (died 1825)

Deaths

 * February 16 – David Erskine Baker, English writer on drama and translator (born 1730)
 * February 28 – Charles Balguy, English translator and medical writer (born 1708)
 * April 27 – Johann Gottlob Carpzov, German Biblical scholar (born 1679)
 * July 15 – Michael Bruce, Scottish poet and hymnist (born 1746)
 * July 26 – Paul Gottlieb Werlhof, German poet and physician (born 1699)
 * August 21 – Thomas Osborne, English publisher and bookseller (born 1704)
 * September 11 – Theophilus Evans, Welsh historian and cleric (born 1693)
 * October 1 – Léon Ménard, French historical writer and lawyer (born 1706)
 * December 22 – John Newbery, English children's author and publisher (born 1713)