1785 in literature

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Events

• January 1 - First publication of the Daily Universal Register (later The Times)
• Thomas Warton becomes Poet Laureate
• The first steam powered cotton spinner was made by Matthew Bolton and James Watt.
• Mary Bowes is abducted by her estranged husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney.

New books

• James Boswell - Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson
• Edmund Burke - Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts
• Francis Grose - A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
• Samuel Johnson - Prayers and Meditations
  • - Works
• Immanuel Kant - Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
• William Paley - The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy
• Clara Reeve - The Progress of Romance
• Thomas Reid - Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
• John Scott - Critical Essays on Some of the Poems

Poetry

• János Bacsanyi - The Valour of the Magyars
• Samuel Egerton Brydges - Sonnets and other Poems
• William Combe - The Royal Dream
• William Cowper - The Task
• George Crabbe - The News-Paper
• William Hayley - A Philosophical, Historical and Moral Essay on Old Maids
• Samuel Johnson - The Poetical Works
• Edward Lovibond - Poems
• Friedrich Schiller - Ode to Joy
• John Wolcot as "Peter Pindar" - The Lousiad
• Robert Burns- "To A Mouse"
  • - Lyric Odes, for the Year 1785
• Ann Yearsley - Poems

Fiction

• Anna Maria Bennett - Anna
• Elizabeth Blower - Maria
• Richard Graves - Eugenius
• Karl Philipp Moritz - Anton Reiser (to 1790)
• Marquis de Sade - Les 120 journées de Sodome

New drama

• George Colman the Younger - Two to One
• Richard Cumberland - The Natural Son
• Elizabeth Inchbald - Appearance Is Against Them
• John O'Keefe - The Poor Soldier

Births

• January 4 - Jakob Grimm
• March 7 - Alessandro Manzoni, Italian poet and novelist
• March 21 - Henry Kirke White, poet
• May 18 - John Wilson ("Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine)
• August 15 - Thomas de Quincey
• October 18 - Thomas Love Peacock

Deaths

• April 14 - William Whitehead, British poet laureate
• December 29 - Johan Herman Wessel

Awards