1775 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
... 1765 ^. 1766 ^. 1767 ^. 1768 ^. 1769 ^. 1770 ^. 1771 ... 1772 1773 1774 -1775- 1776 1777 1778 ... 1779 ^. 1780 ^. 1781 ^. 1782 ^. 1783 ^. 1784 ^. 1785 ... In poetry: 1772 1773 1774 -1775- 1776 1777 1778

Art ^. Archaeology ^. Architecture ^. Literature ^. Music ^. Philosophy ^. Science +...

The year 1775 in literature involved some significant literary events and new works.

Events

January 17 - Richard Brinsley Sheridan's first play, the comedy of manners The Rivals, is premièred at the Covent Garden Theatre in London. Extensively rewritten, it reopens on January 28 to acclaim. It introduces the character of Mrs. Malaprop.
February 23 - Pierre Beaumarchais' comedy Le Barbier de Séville is premièred by the Comédie-Française at the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Rewritten, it reopens on February 26 to acclaim. It introduces the character of Figaro.
October 19 - Samuel Johnson, Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale, visiting Paris, watch King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette dining.^[1]
English actress Sarah Siddons makes her debut at the Drury Lane Theatre in London as Portia in The Merchant of Venice but is not well received.^[2]

Hester Chapone - Miscellanies
Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer (Thomas Tyrwhitt, ed.)
William Combe - Letters from Eliza to Yorick (forgeries supposed to be from Eliza Draper to Laurence Sterne)
Charles Johnstone - The Pilgrim
Samuel Jackson Pratt, as "Courtney Melmoth" - Liberal Opinions, upon Animals, Man, and Providence
Moral Tales (anonymous)
Nicolas-Edme Rétif - Le Paysan perverti
Richard Savage - The Works of Richard Savage (Samuel Johnson, ed.)
"Tahsin" (Mir Muhammad Husain 'Ata Khan) - Nau Tarz-e-Murassa (translation of Amir Khusrow's The Tale of the Four Dervishes into Urdu)

Edmund Burke
- Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774
- Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775
Elizabeth Griffith - The Morality of Shakespeare's Comedy Illustrated
John Howie - Biographia Scoticana
Samuel Johnson
- A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
- Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress
Henrietta Knight - Letters to William Shenstone
James Macpherson - The History of Great Britain
Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau - Essai sur le despotisme
Joseph Priestley - Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin - Des erreurs et de la vérité
Laurence Sterne (d. 1768)
- Letters of the Late Rev. Mr. L. Sterne
- Sterne's Letters to his Friends on Various Occasions
John Wesley - A Calm Address to Our American Colonies

January 8 – John Baskerville, English printer and typefounder (born 1706)
January 13 – Johann Georg Walch, German theologian (born 1693)
March 5 – Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy, French dramatist and actor (born 1727)
June 23 – Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz, German adventurer and writer (born 1692)
November 21 – John Hill, English botanist novelist and dramatist (born c. 1716)
Unknown date – Samuel Boyce, English engraver, dramatist and poet (unknown birth year)

Charles Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities opens in this year ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...")