1785 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1785.

Events

January 1
- First publication of the Daily Universal Register (later The Times) in London.
- Parisian theatre company Théâtre des Variétés-Amusantes moves into a temporary new theatre in the gardens of the Palais-Royal.
February 2 – Sarah Siddons makes her London debut in her most famous rôle, Lady Macbeth, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.^[1]
February – Mary Bowes escapes from her husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney, and begins divorce proceedings.
April 14 – Death of English poet William Whitehead in London. Thomas Warton succeeds him as Poet Laureate of Great Britain after the refusal of William Mason.
May 22 – Robert Burns' first child, Elizabeth ("Dear-bought Bess"), is born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton.^[2]
June 23 – The Litvak rabbi and writer Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg dies at Metz in France after a book-case topples on him, according to tradition.^[3]
November 28 – The Marquis de Sade completes writing The 120 Days of Sodom (Les 120 journées de Sodome) while imprisoned in the Bastille; it will not be published until 1904.
Giacomo Casanova is appointed librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein at the Duchcov Chateau in Bohemia.
New building for the Prussian Royal Library completed in Berlin.

Anna Maria Bennett – Anna
Elizabeth Blower – Maria
Denis Diderot, part trans. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Jacques the Fatalist (Jacques der Fatalist und sein Herr)
Richard Graves – Eugenius
Karl Philipp Moritz – Anton Reiser (to 1790)

Rudolf Erich Raspe, anonymously – Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia

James Boswell – The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Edmund Burke – Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts
Francis Grose – A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Samuel Johnson – Prayers and Meditations
Immanuel Kant – Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
William Paley – The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy
Clara Reeve – The Progress of Romance
Thomas Reid – Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
John Scott – Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English Poets

January 4 – Jakob Grimm, German philologist, jurist and mythologist (died 1863)
January 31 – Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová, Czech cookery writer (died 1845)
March 3 – Frances Mary Richardson Currer, English heiress and bibliophile (died 1861)
March 7 – Alessandro Manzoni, Italian poet and novelist (died 1873)
March 18 – He Changling (賀長齡), Chinese scholar and writer on governance (died 1848)
March 21 – Henry Kirke White, English poet (died 1806)
April 4 – Bettina von Arnim, German novelist (died 1859)
April 7 – Lorenzo Hammarsköld, Swedish poet and author (died 1827)
May 3 – Vicente López y Planes, Argentine politician and writer (died 1856)
May 18 – John Wilson (Christopher North), Scottish writer (died 1854)
August 15 – Thomas De Quincey, English essayist (died 1859)
October 18 – Thomas Love Peacock, English novelist, poet and East India Company official (died 1866)
October 30 – Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau – German travel and gardening writer (died 1871)

January 19 – Jonathan Toup, English classicist, critic and cleric (born 1713)
April 14 – William Whitehead, English poet laureate (born 1715)
May 4 – János Sajnovics, Hungarian linguist (born 1733)
August 31 – Pietro Chiari, Italian playwright, novelist and librettist (born 1712)
September 17 – Antoine Léonard Thomas, French poet and critic (born 1732)
November 12 – Richard Burn, English legal writer (born 1709)
November 25 – Richard Glover, English poet and politician (born 1712)
December 6 – Kitty Clive, English actress and writer of farce (born 1711)
December 18 – Joseph Allegranza, Milanese historian (born 1715)
December 29 – Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian-born Danish poet and satirist (born 1742)
Unknown date – Ali Haider Multani, Punjabi Sufi poet (born 1690)

^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Siddons, Sarah" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
^ "Paton, Elizabeth". The Burns Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2014-01-28.
^ Eleff, Zef (Winter 2012). "The Wages of Criticism". Jewish Review of Books. 8. Retrieved 2013-03-06.