1758 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1758.

Events

• April 15 – Samuel Johnson begins publishing a series of essays, The Idler (1758–1760), in the Universal Chronicle.
• April 24 – Robert Dodsley and his brother James sign a contract with Edmund Burke to launch The Annual Register.
• April 27 – The French historian Jean-François Marmontel enters the service of Madame de Pompadour.
• July/August – The poet and children's writer Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her family move to Warrington in north-west England.
• October – Voltaire buys an estate at Ferney in eastern France.
• unknown date – The French mathematician and philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis moves to his final home in Basel, Switzerland.

New books

Prose

• John Armstrong as Launcelot Temple – Sketches, or, Essays on Various Subjects
• Charlotte Lennox – Henrietta
• Thomas Marryat – Therapeutics, or a New Practice of Physic (in Latin)
• Madame Riccoboni – Histoire du marquis de Cressy
• Horace Walpole
  • A Dialogue Between Two Great Ladies
  • Fugitive Pieces

Drama

• John Cleland – Tombo-Chiqui, or, The American Savage (not produced)
• Denis Diderot – Le Père de famille
• Robert Dodsley – Cleone
• David Garrick – Florizel and Perdita
• John Home – Aegis
• Charlotte Lennox – Philander
• Arthur Murphy – The Upholsterer
• George Alexander Stevens – Albion Restored

Poetry

Main article: 1758 in poetry

• Mark Akenside – An Ode to the Country Gentlemen
• Anica Bošković – Dijalog
• John Gilbert Cooper – The Call of Aristippus
• Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim – Preussische Kriegslieder von einem Grenadier (Prussian War Songs of a Grenadier)
• Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas
• James Macpherson – The Highlander
• Heyat Mahmud – Āmbiyābāṇī; Bengali
• Thomas Parnell – Posthumous Works

Non-fiction

• William Blackstone – A Discourse on the Study of Law
• John Brown – An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (see 1757)
• Andrés Marcos Burriel – Paleografía española
• Elizabeth Carter (translator) – All the Works of Epictetus Which Are Now Extant
• José Francisco de Isla – Historia del famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes
• Benjamin Franklin – Father Abraham's Sermon
• Oliver Goldsmith as "James Willington" – The Memoirs of a Protestant
• William Hawkins – Tracts in Divinity
• Claude Adrien Helvétius – De l'Esprit
• Henry Home – Historical Law-Tracts
• Robert Lowth – The Life of William of Wykeham
• Thomas Marryat – Therapeutics, or a New Practice of Physic
• Antoine-Joseph Pernety
  • Dictionnaire mytho-hermétique, dans lequel on trouve les allégories fabuleuses des poètes, les métaphores, les énigmes et les termes barbares des philosophes hermétiques expliqués
  • Les Fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées et réduites au même principe, avec une explication des hiéroglyphes et de la guerre de Troye
• Antoine Simon Le Page Du Pratz – Histoire de la Louisiane (History of Louisiana)
• Richard Price – A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals
• Emanuel Swedenborg
  • Earths in the Universe
  • Heaven and Hell
  • New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine
  • The Last Judgement
• Jonathan Swift – The History of the Last Four Years of the Queen
• Horace Walpole – A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England
• Arthur Young – The Theatre of the Present War in North America

Births

• January 12 – Dmitry Gorchakov, Russian writer, dramatist and poet (died 1824)
• February 3
  • Vasily Kapnist, Ukrainian poet and playwright (died 1823)
  • Valentin Vodnik, Carniolan Slovene poet, writer and priest (died 1819)
• February 10 – Amalia Holst, German writer, intellectual, and feminist (died 1829)
• March 15 – Magdalene Sophie Buchholm, Norwegian poet (died 1826)
• April 30 – Jane West (Prudentia Homespun), English novelist and writer of conduct books (died 1852)
• October 16 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (died 1843)
• December 9 – Richard Colt Hoare, English antiquary, archeologist and traveler (died 1838)

Deaths

• January 7 – Allan Ramsay the Elder, Scottish poet (born 1686)
• March 22 – Jonathan Edwards, American theologian and preacher (born 1703)
• October – Theophilus Cibber, English dramatist and actor (born 1703; lost at sea)
• October 27 bur. – Elizabeth Blackwell, Scottish botanic writer and illustrator (born 1707)
• December 25 – James Hervey, English religious writer and cleric (born 1714)