1788 in literature

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Events

• Ann Ward marries William Radcliffe, gaining the surname under which she will become known as a writer of Gothic novels.
• Joseph Johnson and Thomas Christie found the Analytical Review.

New books

• Charlotte Turner Smith - Emmeline; or The Orphan of the Castle
• Mary Wollstonecraft - Mary: A Fiction

New drama

• Hannah Cowley - The Fate of Sparta
• Elizabeth Inchbald - Animal Magnetism
• Frances Brooke - Marian

New poetry

Non-fiction

• Anthony Benezet - Some Historical Account of Guinea
• Edward Gibbon - Volumes IV, V, and VI of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• George Hepplewhite (attr.) - Cabinet Maker and Upholsterers Guide
• Immanuel Kant - Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
• Richard Porson - Letters to Archdeacon Travis

Births

• January 22 - George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, English poet (+ 1824)
• September 22 - Theodore Edward Hook, English author
• December 6 - Richard Harris Barham, author of The Ingoldsby Legends

Deaths

• May 17 - Dorothea Biehl, dramatist and translator (born 1731)
• July 21 - Gaetano Filangieri, philosopher (born 1752)
• August 16 - Francisco Javier Alegre, historian and translator (born 1729)
• September 16 - Andrea Spagni, theologian (born 1716)
• October 13 - Robert Nugent, 1st Earl Nugent, Irish politician and poet (born 1702)