1785 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1785.

Events

 * January 1
 * The Daily Universal Register (later The Times) is first published, in London.
 * The Paris theatre company Théâtre des Variétés-Amusantes moves to a temporary new building in the gardens of the Palais-Royal.
 * February 2 – Sarah Siddons makes her London debut in her most famous rôle, Lady Macbeth, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
 * February – The English heiress Mary Bowes escapes from her husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney, and begins divorce proceedings.
 * April 14 – After today's death of the English poet William Whitehead in London, Thomas Warton succeeds him as Poet Laureate of Great Britain, William Mason having refused the post.
 * May 22 – Robert Burns' first child, Elizabeth ("Dear-bought Bess"), is born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton.
 * June 23 – The Litvak rabbi and writer Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg dies at Metz in France after a book-case topples on him, according to tradition.
 * November 28 – The Marquis de Sade finishes writing The 120 Days of Sodom (Les 120 Journées de Sodome) while imprisoned in the Bastille; it will not be published until 1904.
 * unknown date
 * Giacomo Casanova is appointed librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein at the Duchcov Château in Bohemia.
 * A new building for the Prussian Royal Library is completed in Berlin.

Fiction

 * Anna Maria Bennett – Anna
 * Elizabeth Blower – Maria
 * Denis Diderot, part trans. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Jacques the Fatalist (Jacques der Fatalist und sein Herr)
 * Richard Graves – Eugenius
 * Karl Philipp Moritz – Anton Reiser (to 1790)

Children

 * Rudolf Erich Raspe, anonymously – Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia

Drama

 * George Colman the Younger – Two to One
 * Richard Cumberland – The Natural Son
 * Elizabeth Inchbald
 * Appearance Is Against Them
 * I'll Tell You What
 * Leonard MacNally – Fashionable Levities
 * Frederick Reynolds – Werter
 * Emanuel Schikaneder – Der Fremde

Poetry

 * János Bacsanyi – The Valour of the Magyars
 * Samuel Egerton Brydges – Sonnets and other Poems
 * Robert Burns – "To a Mouse"
 * William Combe – The Royal Dream
 * William Cowper – The Task
 * George Crabbe – The News-Paper
 * William Hayley – A Philosophical, Historical and Moral Essay on Old Maids
 * Samuel Johnson – The Poetical Works
 * Friedrich Schiller – Ode to Joy (An die Freude)
 * Charles Wilkins (translator) – Bhagvat-geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon
 * John Wolcot as "Peter Pindar"
 * The Lousiad
 * Lyric Odes, for the Year 1785
 * Ann Yearsley – Poems

Non-fiction

 * Ethan Allen – Reason: the Only Oracle of Man
 * James Boswell – The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
 * Edmund Burke – Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts
 * Francis Grose – A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
 * Samuel Johnson – Prayers and Meditations
 * Immanuel Kant – Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
 * William Paley – The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy
 * Clara Reeve – The Progress of Romance
 * Thomas Reid – Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
 * John Scott – Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English Poets

Births

 * January 4 – Jakob Grimm, German philologist, jurist and mythologist (died 1863)
 * January 31 – Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová, Czech cookery writer (died 1845)
 * March 3 – Frances Mary Richardson Currer, English heiress and bibliophile (died 1861)
 * March 7 – Alessandro Manzoni, Italian poet and novelist (died 1873)
 * March 18 – He Changling (賀長齡), Chinese scholar and writer on governance (died 1848)
 * March 21 – Henry Kirke White, English poet (died 1806)
 * April 4 – Bettina von Arnim, German novelist (died 1859)
 * April 7 – Lorenzo Hammarsköld, Swedish poet and author (died 1827)
 * May 3 – Vicente López y Planes, Argentine politician and writer (died 1856)
 * May 18 – John Wilson (Christopher North), Scottish writer (died 1854)
 * August 15 – Thomas De Quincey, English essayist (died 1859)
 * October 18 – Thomas Love Peacock, English novelist, poet and East India Company official (died 1866)
 * October 30 – Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau – German travel and gardening writer (died 1871)
 * unknown date – Neofit Bozveli, Bulgarian educator and clergyman, early figure in the Bulgarian National Revival (died 1848)

Deaths

 * January 19 – Jonathan Toup, English classicist, critic and cleric (born 1713)
 * April 14 – William Whitehead, English poet laureate (born 1715)
 * May 4 – János Sajnovics, Hungarian linguist (born 1733)
 * August 31 – Pietro Chiari, Italian playwright, novelist and librettist (born 1712)
 * September 17 – Antoine Léonard Thomas, French poet and critic (born 1732)
 * November 12 – Richard Burn, English legal writer (born 1709)
 * November 25 – Richard Glover, English poet and politician (born 1712)
 * December 6 – Kitty Clive, English actress and writer of farce (born 1711)
 * December 18 – Joseph Allegranza, Milanese historian (born 1715)
 * December 29 – Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian-born Danish poet and satirist (born 1742)
 * unknown date – Ali Haider Multani, Punjabi Sufi poet (born 1690)