1769 in literature

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See also: 1768 in literature, other events of 1769, 1770 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• February–April - John Wilkes is expelled from the Parliament of Great Britain three times.
• 5–7 September - English Actor-manager David Garrick stages a Shakespeare Jubilee festival in Stratford-upon-Avon, with no performances of Shakespeare's works.^[1]
• Thomas Chatterton sends "Rowley"'s History of England to Horace Walpole.

New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Bonhôte - Hortensia, or, The Distressed Wife
• Frances Brooke - The History of Emily Montague (the first novel written in Canada)
• Elizabeth Griffith and Richard Griffith
  • The Delicate Distress
  • Two Novels: in Letters
• Charles Jenner - The Placid Man
• Margaret Minifie with Susannah Minifie Gunning - The Hermit
• Susannah Minifie - The Cottage
• Nicolas-Edme Rétif - Le Pied de Fanchette
• Tobias Smollett - The History and Adventures of an Atom
• William Tooke - The Loves of Othniel and Achsah

Poetry

• Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne - The Siege of Jerusalem
• Basílio da Gama - O Uraguai
• Thomas Gray - Ode Performed in the Senate-House at Cambridge
• John Ogilvie - Paradise
• Clara Reeve - Poems

New drama

• Richard Cumberland - The Brothers
• Alexander Dow - Zingis
• Elizabeth Griffith - The School for Rakes
• John Home - The Fatal Discovery
• Charlotte Lennox - The Sister

Nonfiction

• William Blackstone - A Reply to Dr. Priestley
• William Buchan - Domestic Medicine
• Edmund Burke - Observations on a Late State of the Nation
• Charles Burney - An Essay Towards a History of the Principal Comets that have Appeared Since 1742
• Adam Ferguson - Institutes of Moral Philosophy
• Letters of Junius (unknown, see identity of Junius, but Philip Francis by scholarly consensus)
  • The Political Contest i - ii
  • The Letters from Junius to the D*** of G***** (to the Duke of Grafton)
• Oliver Goldsmith - The Roman History (textbook)
• James Granger - Biographical History of England from Egbert the Great to the Revolution
• Elizabeth Montagu - An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear
• Joshua Reynolds - A Discourse
• William Robertson - The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V
• Laurence Sterne
  • A political Romance
  • Sermons by the Late Rev. Mr. Sterne

Births

• February 9 - Susette Gontard, lover of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin
• May 21 - John Hookham Frere, diplomat and author
• September 14 - Alexander von Humboldt, explorer, natural philosopher and educator
• November 12 - Amelia Opie

Deaths

• February 26 - William Duncombe, author
• Edward Kimber, journal editor and novelist

References