1769 in literature

Events

• February–April - John Wilkes is expelled from the Parliament of Great Britain three times.
• May - First publication of one of 16-year-old Thomas Chatterton's poems attributed to the imaginary medieval monk "Thomas Rowley", Elinoure and Juga, in Alexander Hamilton's Town and Country Magazine. This year also Chatterton sends specimens of "Rowley"’s poetry and history The Ryse of Peyncteynge yn Englade to Horace Walpole who at first offers to print them but, discovering Chatterton's age and considering the pieces might be forgeries, later scornfully dismisses him.^[1]
• September 5–7 - English Actor-manager David Garrick stages a Shakespeare Jubilee festival in Stratford-upon-Avon (with no performances of Shakespeare's works).^[2] On October 14 a version opens at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London as The Jubilee.

New books

Fiction

• Elizabeth Bonhôte - Hortensia, or, The Distressed Wife
• Frances Brooke - The History of Emily Montague (the first novel written in Canada)
• Elizabeth Griffith and Richard Griffith
  • The Delicate Distress
  • Two Novels: in Letters
• Charles Jenner - The Placid Man
• Margaret Minifie with Susannah Minifie Gunning - The Hermit
• Susannah Minifie - The Cottage
• Nicolas-Edme Rétif - Le Pied de Fanchette
• Tobias Smollett - The History and Adventures of an Atom
• William Tooke - The Loves of Othniel and Achsah

Poetry

• Basílio da Gama - O Uraguai
• Thomas Gray - Ode Performed in the Senate-House at Cambridge
• John Ogilvie - Paradise
• Clara Reeve - Poems

New drama

• Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne - The Siege of Jerusalem (published)
• Richard Cumberland - The Brothers
• Alexander Dow - Zingis
• Elizabeth Griffith - The School for Rakes (an adaptation of Beaumarchais' Eugenie)
• John Home - The Fatal Discovery
• Charlotte Lennox - The Sister

Non-fiction

• William Blackstone - A Reply to Dr. Priestley
• William Buchan - Domestic Medicine
• Edmund Burke - Observations on a Late State of the Nation
• Charles Burney - An Essay Towards a History of the Principal Comets that have Appeared Since 1742
• Adam Ferguson - Institutes of Moral Philosophy
• Letters of Junius (unknown, see identity of Junius, but Philip Francis by scholarly consensus)
  • The Political Contest i - ii
  • The Letters from Junius to the D*** of G***** (to the Duke of Grafton)
• Oliver Goldsmith - The Roman History (textbook)
• James Granger - Biographical History of England from Egbert the Great to the Revolution
• Elizabeth Montagu - An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear
• Joshua Reynolds - A Discourse
• William Robertson - The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V^[3]
• Laurence Sterne
  • A political Romance
  • Sermons by the Late Rev. Mr. Sterne

Births

• February 9 - Susette Borkenstein Gontard, lover of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (died 1802)
• May 21 - John Hookham Frere, diplomat and author (died 1846)
• September 14 - Alexander von Humboldt, explorer, natural philosopher and educator (died 1859)
• November 12 - Amelia Opie, novelist (died 1853)

Deaths

• February 26 - William Duncombe, dramatist and author (born 1690)
• July - Goronwy Owen, Welsh-language poet (born 1723)
• October 25 - Owen Ruffhead, miscellaneous writer and editor (born 1723)
• December 16 - Lady Elizabeth Germain, aristocratic philanthropist, correspondent of Jonathan Swift (born 1680)
• date unknown - James Merrick, poet (born 1720)

References