1771 in literature

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See also: 1770 in literature, other events of 1771, 1772 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• April 9 - Pedro Correia Garção is arrested and committed to prison by Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal.
• Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling inaugurates the fashion for the "sentimental" novel.

New books

• Claude Joseph Dorat - Les Sacrifices de l'amour
• Elizabeth Griffith - The History of Lady Barton
• The History of Sir William Harrington (anonymous)
• John Langhorne - Letters to Eleonara
• Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
• Tobias Smollett - The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

New drama

• Isaac Bickerstaffe - He Wou'd If He Cou'd
• Joseph Cradock - Zobeide
• Richard Cumberland - The West Indian
• Denis Diderot - Le Fils Naturel
• Carlo Goldoni - Le Bourru Bienfaisant
• Hugh Kelly - Clementina
• George Alexander Stevens - The Fair Orphan

Poetry

• James Beattie - The Minstrel
• James Cawthorn - Poems
• John Langhorne - The Fables of Flora
• Thomas Percy - The Hermit of Warkworth
• Henry James Pye - The Triumph of Fashion

Non-fiction

• John Brown - Description of the Lake of Keswick
• Charles Burney - The Present State of Music in France and Italy
• John Dalrymple - Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland
• Oliver Goldsmith - The History of England
• Samuel Johnson - Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands
• Thomas Pennant - A Tour in Scotland
• William Smellie - Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 100 volumes)
• John Wesley - Works
• Arthur Young - The Farmer's Tour Through the East of England

Births

• June 13 - Sydney Smith, author (died 1845)
• August 15 - Walter Scott, novelist (died 1832)
• September 11 - Mungo Park, explorer (died 1806)
• December 25 - Dorothy Wordsworth, poet (died 1855)
• date unknown - John Lingard, priest, author (died 1851)

Deaths

• May 21 - Christopher Smart, poet (born 1722)
• July 30 - Thomas Gray, poet (* 1716)
• September 17 - Tobias Smollett, novelist, journalist, translator (born 1721)
• October 14 - John Gill, theologian (born 1697)
• December 26 - Claude Adrien Helvétius, philosopher (born 1715)
• probable - Henry Mill, inventor of the typewriter (born c. 1683)