1783 in literature

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Events

• Friedrich Schiller leaves Stuttgart for Weimar to avoid persecution.
• William Cobbett arrives in London.
• August von Kotzebue is appointed to the high court of appeal in Reval.

New books

• Thomas Day - The History of Standford and Merton
• Ellenor Fenn (as "Mrs. Teachwell") - Cobwebs to Catch Flies
• Thomas Holcroft - The Family Picture
• Sophia Lee - The Recess
• Anna Maria Mackenzie - Burton-Wood
• Clara Reeve - The Two Mentors

New drama

• Frances Brooke - Roxina
• Hannah Cowley - Which is the Man?
• Richard Cumberland - The Mysterious Husband
• John O'Keeffe - The Poor Soldier

Poetry

• Lady Anne Barnard - Auld Robin Gray (ballad) (published anonymously)
• William Blake - Poetical Sketches
• Jane Cave - Poems
• Judith Cowper - The Progress of Poetry
• George Crabbe - The Village
• Joseph Ritson - A Select Collection of English Songs
• John Wolcot as "Peter Pindar" - More Lyric Odes, to the Royal Academicians

See also 1783 in poetry

Non-fiction

• James Beattie - Dissertations Moral and Critical
• William Beckford - Dreams, Waking Thughts and Incidents
• Hugh Blair - Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
• Edmund Burke - Letter on the Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics
• Adam Ferguson - History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic
• William Godwin - Life of Lord Chatham
• Immanuel Kant - Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science
• Vicesimus Knox - Elegant Extracts
• Mémoires secrets (anonymous)
• Ezra Stiles - The United States elevated to Glory and Honor
• Horace-Bénédict de Saussure - Essai sur l'hygrométrie

Births

• January 23 - Stendhal, novelist (died 1842)
• April 3 - Washington Irving, short story writer (died 1859)

Deaths

• January 2 - Johann Jakob Bodmer, journalist and critic (born 1698)
• April 17 - Louise d'Epinay (born 1726)
• September 6 - Anna Williams, poet and friend of Dr Johnson (born 1706)
• October 10 - Henry Brooke, novelist, playwright, and poet (born 1703)
• October 29 - Jean le Rond d'Alembert, mathematician
• November 3 - Charles Collé, dramatist (born 1709)
• November 23 - Ann Eliza Bleecker, poet and novelist (born 1752)