1787 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1787.

Events

 * January 15 – Ann Ward marries William Radcliffe, gaining the surname by which she will be known as a writer of Gothic novels.
 * April 16 – Royall Tyler's The Contrast becomes the first comedy written by an American citizen to be professionally produced, at the John Street Theatre (Manhattan).
 * April 17 – The Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is published by William Creech. It includes a Burns portrait by Alexander Nasmyth. The poet has great social success in the city's literary circles; 16-year-old Walter Scott meets him at the house of Adam Ferguson.
 * June 1 – King George III of Great Britain issues a Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice, which can be used to prosecute obscene publications.
 * June 27 – Just before midnight, Edward Gibbon completes The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the small summerhouse in his garden in Lausanne, Switzerland.
 * July – Friedrich Schiller arrives in Weimar.
 * November 21 – François-Joseph Talma makes his professional stage debut at the Comédie-Française as Seide, in Voltaire's Mahomet.
 * December 4 – Robert Burns meets Agnes Maclehose at a party given by Miss Erskine Nimmo.

Fiction

 * Elizabeth Bonhôte – Olivia, or, The Deserted Bride
 * Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai – Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Sorrows of Young Werther (revised edition)
 * Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse – Ardinghello and die glückseligen Inseln
 * Elizabeth Helme – Louisa; or the Cottage on the Moor
 * Johann Karl August Musäus – Volksmärchen der Deutschen (fifth volume)
 * Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins – The Victim of Fancy
 * Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken – Abraham Blankaart

Children

 * François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Fanfan et Lolotte, ou Histoire de deux enfants abandonnés dans une île déserte (Fanfan and Lolotte, Story of Two Children Abandoned on a Desert Island)

Drama

 * Pierre Beaumarchais – Tarare (opera)
 * George Colman the Elder –The Village Lawyer
 * George Colman the Younger – Inkle and Yarico (comic opera)
 * Richard Cumberland – The Country Attorney
 * Germaine de Staël – Jeanne Grey
 * Thomas Holcroft – Seduction
 * Elizabeth Inchbald
 * All on a Summer's Day
 * The Midnight Hour
 * Such Things Are
 * Harriet Lee – The New Peerage
 * Andrew Macdonald –Vimonda
 * Friedrich Schiller – Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien
 * Royall Tyler – The Contrast

Non-fiction

 * Thomas Best – A Concise Treatise on the Art of Angling
 * Mathurin Jacques Brisson – Pesanteur Spécifique des Corps
 * Ottobah Cugoano – Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species
 * (Sir) John Fenn (ed.) – The Paston Letters (Original letters, written during the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III)
 * John Hawkins – Life of Samuel Johnson
 * 'Publius' (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay) – The Federalist papers (serial publication begins with Hamilton's "Federalist No. 1 – General Introduction" in The Independent Journal (New York City), October 27)
 * Scots Musical Museum, vol. 1
 * Mary Wollstonecraft – Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Births

 * February 2 – Charles Etienne Boniface, French music teacher, playwright and journalist (died 1853)
 * February 17 – George Mogridge ("Old Humphrey"), English children's writer and poet (died 1854)
 * February 23 – Emma Willard, American teacher and writer (died 1870)
 * March 7 – George Bethune English, American explorer and writer (died 1828)
 * April 26 – Ludwig Uhland, German poet (died 1862)
 * May 29 – Konstantin Batyushkov, Russian poet, essayist and translator (died 1855)
 * July 9 – Taliesin Williams, Welsh poet and author (died 1847)
 * September 13 – John Adamson, English antiquary and expert on Portuguese (died 1855)
 * November 4 – Edmund Kean, English actor (died 1833)
 * November 15 – Richard Henry Dana Sr., American poet, critic and lawyer (died 1879)
 * November 21 – Bryan Procter (Barry Cornwall), English poet (died 1874)
 * December 16 – Mary Russell Mitford, English novelist (died 1855)

Deaths

 * April 1 – Floyer Sydenham, English classical scholar and translator (born 1710)
 * April 2 – Francisco Javier Clavijero, Mexican-born historian (born 1731)
 * May 4 – Philip Skelton, Irish clergyman and writer (born 1707)
 * June 19 – John Brown, Scottish theologian (born 1722)
 * October 28 – Johann Karl August Musäus, German satirist and children's writer (born 1735)
 * October 30 – Ferdinando Galiani, Italian economist (born 1728)
 * November 3 – Robert Lowth, English poet, grammarian and bishop (born 1710)
 * December 16 – Mary Russell Mitford, English novelist and dramatist (d. 1855)
 * December 18 – Soame Jenyns, English poet and essayist (born 1704)