1788 in literature

Children

• Thomas Day – A History of Little Jack
• François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil – Alexis, ou la Maisonnette dans les bois (Alexis or the Little House in the Woods)
• Mary Wollstonecraft – Original Stories from Real Life, with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness

Drama

• Frances Brooke – Marian
• George Colman the Younger – Ways and Means
• Hannah Cowley – The Fate of Sparta
• Olympe de Gouges – Zamore et Mirza (published)
• Bertie Greatheed – The Regent
• Elizabeth Inchbald
• Animal Magnetism
• The Child of Nature
• John O'Keeffe
• Aladdin
• The Prisoner at Large
• Mariana Starke – The Sword of Peace
• Eglantine Wallace – The Ton

Poetry

• Maria and Harriet Falconar
• Poems
• Poems on Slavery
• Samuel Jackson Pratt – Sympathy

Non-fiction

• Anthony Benezet – Some Historical Account of Guinea
• Ralph Broome – Letters of Simkin the Second to his dear brother in Wales, containing a humble description of the trial of Warren Hastings, Esq. (further instalments up to 1791)
• Edward Gibbon – Volumes IV, V, and VI of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay – The Federalist Papers
• George Hepplewhite (attr.) – Cabinet Maker and Upholsterers Guide
• Immanuel Kant – Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
• Hannah More – Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society
• Richard Porson – Letters to Archdeacon Travis
• Thomas Scott – Commentary on the Whole Bible (beginning 174 weekly numbers)

Births

• January 22 – George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, English poet (died 1824)
• February 28 – Samuel Bamford, English writer, poet and radical (died 1872)
• March 1 – Gheorghe Asachi, Moldavian polymath (died 1869)
• March 20 – Thomas Medwin, English poet, biographer and translator (died 1869)
• September 22 – Theodore Edward Hook, English man of letters and composer (died 1841)
• c. October 14 – Robert Millhouse, English weaver poet (died 1839)
• October 24 – Sarah Josepha Hale, American novelist and poet (died 1879)
• December 6 – Richard Harris Barham (Thomas Ingoldsby), English novelist, poet and cleric (died 1845)

Deaths

• March 31 – Frances Vane, Viscountess Vane (Lady Fanny), English memoirist (born 1715)
• May 17 – Dorothea Biehl, Danish dramatist and translator (born 1731)
• July 21 – Gaetano Filangieri, Italian philosopher (born 1752)
• August 4 – Evan Evans (Ieuan Fardd or Ieuan Brydydd Hir), priest and poet, 57
• August 16 – Francisco Javier Alegre, Mexican historian and translator (born 1729)
• September 16 – Andrea Spagni, Italian theologian (born 1716)
• October 13 – Robert Nugent, 1st Earl Nugent, Irish politician and poet (born 1709)

References