1779 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1779.

Events

 * April 6 – The premiėre of Iphigenie auf Tauris by Johann Wolfgang Goethe is held at the private Ducal Palace in Weimar.
 * October 8 – William Blake enrols as a student with the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House in London.

Fiction

 * Richard Graves – Columella
 * Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi – Woldemar
 * Ignacy Krasicki – Fables and Parables (Bajki i przypowieści)
 * Nocturnal Revels
 * Samuel Jackson Pratt as "Courtney Melmoth"
 * Shenstone-Green
 * The Tutor of Truth
 * The Sorrows of Werther (anonymous translation of a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe work)

Children

 * Joachim Heinrich Campe – Robinson der Jüngere (based on Defoe)

Drama

 * Fanny Burney – The Witlings (unpublished)
 * Hannah Cowley
 * Albina, Countess Raimond
 * Who's the Dupe?
 * Richard Cumberland – Calypso
 * Hugh Downman – Lucius Junius Brutus
 * Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian – Les Deux Billets
 * William Hodson – Zoraida
 * Robert Jephson – The Law of Lombardy
 * Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Nathan der Weise (published)
 * Hannah More – The Fatal Falsehood
 * Elizabeth Richardson – The Double Deception
 * Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The Critic

Poetry

 * William Cowper and John Newton – Olney Hymns
 * Robert Fergusson – Poems
 * William Hayley – Epistle to Admiral Keppel
 * Ann Murry – Poems
 * Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Epístola de Jovino a Anfriso, escrita desde el Paular
 * Leandro Fernandez de Moratín – La toma de Granada por los Reyes Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel
 * Tomás de Iriarte – La música

Non-fiction

 * John Abercrombie – The British Fruit Gardener and Art of Pruning
 * Anna Barbauld – Lessons for Children
 * James Burnett – Antient Metaphysics
 * Edward Capell – Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare
 * George Chalmers – Political Annals of the Present United Colonies
 * Edward Gibbon – A Vindication of Some Passages in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
 * David Hume (died 1776; anonymously) – Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
 * Samuel Johnson – Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets
 * Vicessimus Knox – Essays
 * Franz Mesmer – Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
 * John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany
 * Thomas Scott – The Force of Truth
 * Horace Walpole – A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton

Births

 * January 18 – Peter Mark Roget, English lexicographer (died 1869)
 * March 1 – Gottfried Weber, German writer on music (died 1839)
 * March 3 – Matthäus Casimir von Collin, Austrian poet and dramatist (died 1824)
 * March 10 – Frances Trollope (born Frances Milton), English novelist and writer (died 1863)
 * March 30 – Antoine Ó Raifteiri, Irish Gaelic poet (died 1835)
 * May 2 – John Galt, Scottish novelist and entrepreneur (died 1839)
 * May 28 – Thomas Moore, Irish poet and songwriter (died 1852)
 * August 1 – Francis Scott Key, American poet (died 1843)
 * September 10 – Alexander Voeykov, Russian poet (died 1839)
 * November 14 – Adam Oehlenschläger, Danish Romantic poet and dramatist (died 1850)
 * December 22 – Thomas Gaisford, English classicist (died 1855)
 * December 31 – Horace (Horatio) Smith, English poet and novelist (died 1849)

Deaths

 * January 20 – David Garrick, English dramatist, actor and impresario (born 1717)
 * March 4 – Heinrich Leopold Wagner, German dramatist (born 1747)
 * June 7 – William Warburton, English writer, critic and cleric (born 1698)
 * June 10 – William Kenrick, English novelist, playwright and satirist (born c. 1725)
 * July 10 – Jane Gomeldon, English essayist and writer of maxims (born c. 1720)
 * July 21 – Caleb Fleming, English minister and pamphleteer (born 1698)
 * November 16 – Pehr Kalm, Swedish/Finnish botanist, naturalist and travel writer (born 1716)
 * December 22 – István Küzmics (Števan Küzmič), Hungarian writer in Prekmurje Slovene (Wendish) (born c. 1723)