1759 in literature

See also: 1758 in literature, other events of 1759, 1760 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie is formally suppressed by the French government.
• Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch becomes professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Jena.
• William Warburton becomes Bishop of Gloucester.
• The opening of the British Museum in January.

New books

• Sarah Fielding – The History of the Countess of Dellwyn
• Samuel Johnson – The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (on Wikisource).
• Gotthold Lessing – Fables
• William Rider – Candidus (a translation of Candide)
• Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman vols i–ii.
• Voltaire – Candide

New 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

• Edmund Burke – The Annual Register
• Angelique 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
• Mary Latter – Miscellaneous Works
• William Robertson – The History of Scotland During the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James
• Adam Smith – 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, poet (died 1796)
• March 29 – Alexander Chalmers, journalist (died 1834)
• April 27 – Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist writer (died 1797)
• November 10 – Friedrich Schiller, poet and dramatist (died 1805)
• December 25 – Richard Porson, classical scholar (died 1808)

Deaths

• June 12 – William Collins, poet (born 1721)
• July 27 – Pierre Louis Maupertuis, philosopher (born 1698)
• August 6 – Eugene Aram, philologist (born 1704)
• August 24 – Ewald Christian von Kleist, poet (born 1715)
• September 5 – Lauritz de Thurah, architectural historian (born 1706)
• October 7 – Joseph Ames, bibliographer (born 1680)
• probable – Anton Wilhelm Amo, philosopher (born 1703)