1779 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1779.

Events

• April 6 – Premiėre of Iphigenie auf Tauris by Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
• October 8 – William Blake enrols as a student with the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House in London.

New books

• Richard Graves – Columella
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi – Woldemar
• Ignacy Krasicki – Fables and Parables (Bajki i przypowieści)
• Nocturnal Revels
• Samuel Jackson Pratt as "Courtney Melmoth"
  • Shenstone-Green
  • The Tutor of Truth
• The Sorrows of Werther (anonymous translation of a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe work)
• Félix Antonio Ponce de León – Vida, hechos y aventuras de Juan Mayorazgo

New drama

• Fanny Burney – The Witlings (unpublished)
• Hannah Cowley
  • Albina, Countess Raimond
  • Who's the Dupe
• Richard Cumberland – Calypso
• Hugh Downman – Lucius Junius Brutus
• Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian – Les Deux Billets
• Robert Jephson – The Law of Lombardy
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Nathan der Weise (published)
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The Critic

New poetry

• William Cowper and John Newton – Olney Hymns
• Robert Furgusson – Poems
• William Hayley – Epistle to Admiral Keppel
• Ann Murry – Poems
• Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Epístola de Jovino a Anfriso, escrita desde el Paular
• Leandro Fernandez de Moratín – La toma de Granada por los Reyes Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel
• Tomás de Iriarte – La música

Non-fiction

• Anna Barbauld – Lessons for Children
• James Burnett – Antient Metaphysics
• Edward Capell – Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare
• George Chalmers – Political Annals of the Present United Colonies
• Edward Gibbon – A Vindication of Some Passages in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• David Hume (died 1776; anonymously) – Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
• Samuel Johnson – Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets
• Vicessimus Knox – Essays
• Franz Mesmer – Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
• John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany
• Horace Walpole – A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton

Births

• January 18 – Peter Mark Roget, English lexicographer (died 1869)
• March 1 – Gottfried Weber, German writer on music (died 1839)
• March 3 – Matthäus Casimir von Collin, Austrian poet and dramatist (died 1824)
• March 30 – Antoine Ó Raifteiri, Irish Gaelic poet (died 1835)
• May 2 – John Galt, Scottish novelist and entrepreneur (died 1839)
• May 28 – Thomas Moore, Irish poet and songwriter (died 1852)
• August 1 – Francis Scott Key, American poet (died 1843)
• September 10 – Alexander Voeykov, Russian poet (died 1839)
• November 14 – Adam Oehlenschläger, Danish Romantic poet and dramatist (died 1850)
• December 22 – Thomas Gaisford, English classicist (died 1855)

Deaths

• January 20 – David Garrick, English dramatist, actor and impresario (born 1717)
• March 4 – Heinrich Leopold Wagner, German dramatist (born 1747)
• June 7 – William Warburton, English writer, critic and cleric (born 1698)
• June 10 – William Kenrick, English novelist, playwright and satirist (born c. 1725)
• December 22 – István Küzmics (Števan Küzmič), Hungarian writer in Prekmurje Slovene (Wendish) (born c. 1723)
• Unknown date – Jane Gomeldon, English essayist and writer of maxims (unknown year of birth)