1791 in literature

Events

• May 16 – James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is published in 2 volumes in London on the 28th anniversary of their first meeting.

• 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 Scottish poet and exciseman Robert Burns moves to Dumfries.
• 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".

  New books

Fiction

• Cao Xueqin and others – Dream of the Red Chamber
• Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai – Émilie de Varmont
• Elizabeth Inchbald – A Simple Story
• Ann Radcliffe – The Romance of the Forest
• Susanna Rowson – Charlotte, a Tale of Truth
• Marquis de Sade – Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu
• Charlotte Turner Smith – Celestina

  Drama

• Antoine-Vincent Arnault – Marius à Minturne
• Elizabeth Inchbald – Lovers' Vows
• John O'Keeffe – Wild Oats

  Poetry

• Robert Burns – "Tam o' Shanter"
• Erasmus Darwin – The Botanic Garden
• Christopher Smart – The Poems of the late Christopher Smart

  Non-fiction

• James Boswell – Life of Samuel Johnson
• Olympe de Gouges – Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
• Isaac D'Israeli – Curiosities of Literature
• Georg Forster – Views from the Lower Rhine
• William Gilpin – Remarks on Forest Scenery and Other Woodland Views
• Thomas Paine – Rights of Man
• Petrarch's View of Life
• Helen Maria Williams – Letters on the French Revolution

  Births

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

  Deaths

• January 11 – William Williams Pantycelyn, Welsh religious writer and hymnist
• March 2 – John Wesley, English preacher and religious writer
• April 2 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, French revolutionary and writer
• April 19 – Richard Price, Welsh moral philosopher and preacher
• June 12 – Francis Grose, English antiquary and lexicographer
• June 30 – Jean-Baptiste Descamps, French writer and painter
• July 2 – Søren Abildgaard, Danish naturalist and writer
• November 22 – Johann Silberschlag, German theologian

  In literature

• Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus is based on circumstances surrounding the Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.