1776 in literature

Events

• The United States issues its Declaration of Independence on July 4.

New books

• Elizabeth Griffith - The Story of Lady Juliana Harley
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi - Edward Allwill's Briefsammlung
• Ignacy Krasicki - The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom (Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki) (first novel in Polish)
• Samuel Jackson Pratt as "Courtney Melmoth" - The Pupil of Pleasure

New drama

• Hannah Cowley - The Runaway
• Samuel Foote - The Bankrupt
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Stella
• Friedrich Maximilian Klinger - Sturm und Drang
• Heinrich Leopold Wagner - Die Kindermörderin

New poetry

• James Beattie - Poems
• Richard Graves - Euphrosyne
• William Mickle - The Lusiad
• Hannah More - Sir Eldred of the Bower, and The Bleeding Rock
• Jonathan Richardson - Morning Thoughts
• John Scott - Amwell
• Augustus Montague Toplady - Psalms and Hymns
• William Whitehead - Variety

Non-fiction

• John Adams - Thoughts on Government
• James Beattie - Essays
• Jeremy Bentham - Fragment on Government
• Charles Burney - A General History of Music
• George Campbell - The Philosophy of Rhetoric
• David Dalrymple - Annals of Scotland
• Edward Gibbon - The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 1
• Oliver Goldsmith - A Survey of Experimental Philosophy
• Sir John Hawkins - A General History of the Science and Practice of Music
• David Herd - Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs
• Soame Jenyns - A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion
• Thomas Paine
  • Common Sense
  • The American Crisis
• Richard Price - Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty
• Adam Smith - An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Births

• January 24 - E T A Hoffman
• February 12 - Richard Mant
• November 20 - William Blackwood
  • Maria Versfelt

Deaths

• April 29 - Edward Wortley Montagu, travel writer
• May 23 - Jeanne Julie Eleonore de Lespinasse, "Mademoiselle de Lespinasse"
• David Hume