1777 in literature

Events

• February 8 – Thomas Chatterton's volume Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth Century is published anonymously and posthumously in London, edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt, who still believes them to be genuine work by a medieval monk transcribed by Chatterton.
• March – Fanny Burney is introduced to Samuel Johnson by her father, Charles Burney.
• April 1 – Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's play Sturm und Drang is premièred by the Seyler theatrical company in Leipzig. It gives its name to the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature.
• April 12 – The poet and grammarian Robert Lowth is appointed Bishop of London.
• May 8 – The first performance of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy of manners The School for Scandal takes place at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
• October – James Boswell's essays first appear as The Hypochondriak in The London Magazine.

• Det Dramatiske Selskab is founded in Copenhagen as an acting academy.

  New books

Fiction

• Frances Brooke – The Excursion
• Henry Mackenzie – Julia de Roubigne
• Samuel Jackson Pratt
• *Charles and Charlotte
• * Travels for the Heart
• Clara Reeve – The Champion of Virtue
• Lady Mary Walker
• *Letters from the Duchesse de Crui
• *Memoirs of the Marchioness de Louvoi

  Drama

• Charles Dibdin – The Quaker
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Iphigenie auf Tauris
• John O'Keeffe – The Shamrock
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The School for Scandal
• Nicolás Fernández de Moratín – Guzman el Bueno
• Hannah More – Percy
• Friedrich Maximilian Klinger – Sturm und Drang

  Poetry

• Thomas Chatterton – Poems
• William Combe
• *The Diaboliad
• *The First of April
• Thomas Day – The Desolation of America
• William Dodd – Thoughts in Prison
• William Roscoe – Mount Pleasant
• Thomas Warton – Poems
• Paul Whitehead – Poems
• Nicolás Fernández de Moratín – Las naves de Cortés destruidas

  Non-fiction

• Hugh Blair – Sermons
• Jacques-François Blondel – Cours d'architecture ou traité de la décoration, distribution et constructions des bâtiments contenant les leçons données en 1750, et les années suivantes, vol. 9
• Edmund Burke – Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol
• James Cook – A Voyage Toward the South Pole
• Georg Forster – A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years, 1772, 3, 4, and 5
• Nicolás Fernández de Moratín – Carta histórica sobre el origen y progresos de las fiestas de toros en España
• John Howard – The State of the Prisons in England and Wales
• David Hume – The Life of David Hume
• Hannah More – Essays
• Maurice Morgann – An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff
• Joseph Priestley
• *Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit
• *The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated
• Isaac Reed – The Repository
• William Robertson – The History of America
• Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield – Characters
• Johannes Nikolaus Tetens – Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung

  Births

• February – James Johnson, Irish surgeon and medical writer
• February 12 – Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, German Romantic novelist
• February 16 – Maria Hack, English children's writer
• June 3 – Antonio Gasparinetti, Italian poet, playwright and military officer
• July 27 – Thomas Campbell, Scottish poet

  Deaths

• February 3 – Hugh Kelly, Irish poet and dramatist
• September 24 – James Fortescue, English poet
• October 12 – Alexander Sumarokov, Russian poet and dramatist
• October 21 – Samuel Foote, English dramatist