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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1791.

Events

May 16 – James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is published^[1] in 2 volumes in London on the 28th anniversary of their first meeting.
September 10 – The Scottish poet and exciseman Robert Burns moves to Dumfries.^[2]
unknown dates
- Chinese writer and publisher Gao E and his partner Cheng Weiyan claim to have discovered Cao Xueqin's lost novel Dream of the Red Chamber.
- The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge begins his course at Jesus College, Cambridge. He marks his transfer from Christ's Hospital school by composing the poem "On Quitting School".^[3]

James Boswell – Life of Samuel Johnson
Olympe de Gouges – Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen
Isaac D'Israeli – Curiosities of Literature (Volume 1)
Georg Forster – Views from the Lower Rhine (Volume 1)^[4]
William Gilpin – Remarks on Forest Scenery and Other Woodland Views (3 volumes)
Thomas Paine – Rights of Man (Part 1)
Petrarch's View of Life (Latin dialogues De remediis utriusque fortunae translated by Susannah Dobson)
Helen Maria Williams – Letters on the French Revolution

January 15 – Franz Grillparzer, Austrian dramatist (died 1872)
March 15 – Charles Knight, English publisher and author (died 1873)
July 5 – Samuel Bailey, English philosopher and author (died 1870)
August 17 – Richard Lalor Sheil, Irish politician, author and orator (died 1851)
September 21 – István Széchenyi, Hungarian politician, writer and diarist (died 1860)
October 26 – Charles Sprague, American poet and banker (died 1875)
December 24 – Eugène Scribe, French dramatist (died 1861)

January 11 – William Williams Pantycelyn, Welsh religious writer and hymnist (born 1717)
March 2 – John Wesley, English preacher and religious writer (born 1703)
April 2 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, French revolutionary and writer (born 1749)
April 19 – Richard Price, Welsh moral philosopher and preacher (born 1723)
June 12 – Francis Grose, English antiquary and lexicographer (born c. 1730)
June 30 – Jean-Baptiste Descamps, French writer and painter (born 1714)
July 2 – Søren Abildgaard, Danish naturalist and writer (born 1718)
November 22 – Johann Silberschlag, German theologian (born 1721)^[5]

^ Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 232–233. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^ Carol McGuirk (6 October 2015). Reading Robert Burns: Texts, Contexts, Transformations. Routledge. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-317-31735-7.
^ Published in his Poetical Works (1834).
^ Speake, Jennifer (2014). Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 454. ISBN 9781135456634. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
^ Heiner F. Klemme; Manfred Kuehn (30 June 2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 723. ISBN 978-1-4742-5598-1.