1762 in literature

Events

• The Sorbonne library is founded.
• The Académie française produces a new edition of its dictionary of the French language.
• In Paris, the Comédie-Italienne is merged with the Opéra-Comique and performs at the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
• Benjamin Victor's adaptation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is staged by David Garrick at Drury Lane, and runs for five nights. It is the earliest known performance of that Shakespearean play in any form.
• Christoph Martin Wieland begins publishing his prose translations of 22 Shakespearean plays, the first translations of them into German.
• Rev. Hugh Blair is appointed first Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh by King George III, the first such chair in English literature.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract and Emile, or On Education are published in Amsterdam and The Hague respectively, and in Rousseau's native Republic of Geneva and in Paris they are prohibited and publicly burned.

New books

Fiction

• John Cleland – The Romance of a Night
• Oliver Goldsmith – The Citizen of the World
• Charles Johnstone – The Reverie
• John Langhorne – Solyman and Almena
• Thomas Leland – Longsword, Earl of Salisbury: An Historical Romance
• Charlotte Lennox – Sophia
• Sarah Scott – Millenium Hall and the Country Adjacent
• Tobias Smollett – The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves
• Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

  Drama

• John Delap – Hecuba
• Nicolás Fernandez de Moratín – La petimetra
• Samuel Foote – The Orators
• David Garrick – Cymbeline
• Carlo Goldoni – Le baruffe chiozzotte
• Carlo Gozzi – Turandot
• Charlotte Lennox – The Sister
• Hannah More – The Search after Happiness

  Poetry

• James Boswell – The Cub at Newmarket
• Elizabeth Carter – Poems on Several Occasions
• Charles Churchill – The Ghost
• Mary Collier – Poems
• John Cunningham – The Contemplatist
• Tomás Antônio Gonzaga – Marília de Dirceu
• Edward Jerningham – The Nunnery
• Robert Lloyd – Poems
• James Macpherson as "Ossian" – Fingal
• William Whitehead – A Charge to the Poets
• Edward Young – Resignation

  Non-fiction

• The North Briton
• George Campbell – A Dissertation on Miracles
• Jacques Cazotte – Ollivier.
• Denis Diderot
• *Éloge de Richardson
• *Rameau's Nephew
• Nicolas Fernández de Moratín – Desengaños al teatro español
• Henry Fielding – Works
• Oliver Goldsmith
• *The Life of Richard Nash
• *The Mystery Revealed
• Paisiy Hilendarski – Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya
• Henry Home – Elements of Criticism
• Richard Hurd – Letters on Chivalry and Romance
• William Kenrick – Emilius and Sophia
• John Langhorne – Letters on Religious Retirement, Melancholy and Enthusiasm
• Robert Lowth – A Short Introduction to English Grammar
• William Williams Pantycelyn – Llythyr Martha Philopur at y Parchedig Philo Evangelius eu hathro
• John Parkhurst – An Hebrew and English Lexicon
• Joseph Priestley – A Course of Lectures on the Theory of Language, and Universal Grammar
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• *The Social Contract
• *Emile, or On Education
• Horace Walpole – Anecdotes of Painting in England, Volume 1

  Births

• January 11 – Andrew Cherry, Irish playwright and actor-manager
• May 19 – Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher
• September 11 – Joanna Baillie, Scottish poet and dramatist
• September 24 – William Lisle Bowles, English poet and critic
• October 30 – André Chénier, French poet
• Susanna Rowson née Haswell, English-born American novelist, poet, playwright, religious writer, actress, educator and abolitionist

  Deaths

• May 26 – Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, German philosopher
• June 17 – Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, French poet and tragedian
• June 26 – Luise Gottsched, German poet, comic playwright and translator
• August 21 – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, English letter writer and poet
• October 14 – Hieronymus Pez, Austrian historian and monastic librarian