1771 in literature

• April 9 – Pedro Correia Garção is arrested and committed to prison by Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal.
• unknown dates
• Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling inaugurates the fashion for sentimentalism in novels.{{cite book|author=Stefano Castelvecchi|title=Sentimental Opera: Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeois Drama|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dQdCAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA229|date=24 October 2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-46952-5|pages=229}}
• Sophie von La Roche's Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim: Von einer Freundin derselben aus Original-Papieren und andern zuverläßigen Quellen gezogen ("History of Lady von Sternheim"), completed at Bönnigheim and published this year in Leipzig edited by the author's cousin Christoph Wieland in 2 volumes, is, within the tradition of German literature, the first significant novel by a woman,Baldwin, Claire (2000). "Sophie von La Roche." In Konzett, Matthias (ed.) Encyclopedia of German Literature 2. Chicago; London: Fitzroy Dearborn. the first epistolary novel and the first "sentimental" novel.
• Matthias Claudius begins editing and publishing the newspaper Der Wandsbecker Bothe.{{cite book|author=Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi|title=Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oeet5Lqd6nwC&pg=PA615|year=1994|publisher=McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP|isbn=978-0-7735-1018-0|pages=615}}
• Slovene literature: The Nouvi Zákon, a translation of the New Testament into the Prekmurje Slovene language by István Küzmics, the Hungarian Slovene writer and evangelical pastor, is published (in Halle).{{cite book|author1=Sebastian Kempgen|author2=Peter Kosta|author3=Tilman Berger|author4=Karl Gutschmidt|title=Die slavischen Sprachen / The Slavic Languages. Halbband 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GACTBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA1432|date=26 November 2014|publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG|isbn=978-3-11-021547-2|pages=1432}}
• Archbishop Richard Robinson founds the Armagh Public Library in the north of Ireland.{{cite web |url=http://armaghpubliclibrary.arm.ac.uk/ |title=Armagh Public Library - founded in 1771 |website=armaghpubliclibrary.arm.ac.uk |access-date=14 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120804104716/http://armaghpubliclibrary.arm.ac.uk/ |archive-date=4 August 2012 |url-status=dead}}

• Sophia Briscoe – Miss Melmoth; or the New Clarissa
• Claude Joseph Dorat – Les Sacrifices de l'amour
• Elizabeth Griffith – The History of Lady Barton
• John Langhorne – Letters to Eleonara
• Henry Mackenzie – The Man of Feeling{{cite book |last1=Day |first1=Gary |last2=Lynch |first2=Jack |title=The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 3 Volume Set: 1660 - 1789 |date=9 March 2015 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4443-3020-5 |page=950 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ThBhBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA950 |language=en}}
• Louis-Sébastien Mercier – L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais{{Cite journal|last=Wilkie|first=Everett C. Jr|date=1984|title=Mercier's "L'An 2440": Its publishing history during the author's lifetime, Part I|journal=Harvard Library Bulletin |series=New Series|url=https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37364176|language=en-US|issn=0017-8136}}
• Tobias Smollett – The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
• Sophie von La Roche – Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim

• Christopher Smart – Hymns for the Amusement of Children

• Isaac Bickerstaffe – He Wou'd If He Cou'd
• José Cadalso – Sancho García
• Richard Cumberland – The West Indian
• Denis Diderot – Le Fils Naturel
• Carlo Goldoni – Le Bourru Bienfaisant
• Samuel Foote – The Maid of Bath
• Hugh Kelly – Clementina
• George Alexander Stevens – The Fair Orphan
• Alexander Sumarokov – Dmitri the Usurper

{{main article|1771 in poetry}}

• James Beattie – The Minstrel
• James Cawthorn – Poems
• John Langhorne – The Fables of Flora
• Thomas Percy – The Hermit of Warkworth
• Henry James Pye – The Triumph of Fashion
• Christoph Martin Wieland – Der neue Amadis

• John Brown – Description of the Lake of Keswick
• Charles Burney – The Present State of Music in France and Italy
• John Dalrymple – Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland
• John William Fletcher – Five Checks to Antinomianism
• Oliver Goldsmith – The History of England
• Samuel Johnson – Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands
• Martinez de Pasqually – Traité sur la réintégration des êtres dans leur première propriété, vertu et puissance spirituelle divine (approximate year)
• Thomas Pennant – A Tour in Scotland
• Richard Price – Observations on Reversionary Payments
• William Smellie – Encyclopædia Britannica (in 100 volumes)
• Emanuel Swedenborg – True Christian Religion
• John Wesley – Works
• Arthur Young – The Farmer's Tour Through the East of England
• Real Academia Española – Gramática

• January 17 – Charles Brockden Brown, American novelist (died 1810)
• February 5 – John Lingard, English historian and Catholic priest (died 1851)
• March 23 – Lumley Skeffington, English playwright and fop (died 1850)
• June 13 – Sydney Smith, English wit and cleric (died 1845)
• August 15 – Sir Walter Scott, Scottish novelist and poet (died 1832)
• November 4 – James Montgomery, Scottish-born poet and hymnist (died 1854)
• December 25 – Dorothy Wordsworth, English diarist and poet (died 1855)
• December 26 – Heinrich Joseph von Collin, Austrian dramatist (died 1811)

• January 11 – Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, French philosopher (born 1704)
• February 2 – John Lockman, English historian, poet and translator (born 1698)
• March 9 – Henry Pemberton, English man of letters and physician (born 1694)
• May 21 – Christopher Smart, English poet (born 1722)
• July 30 – Thomas Gray, English poet (born 1716)
• September 17 – Tobias Smollett, Scottish novelist, journalist and translator (born 1721)
• October 14 – John Gill, English theologian (born 1697)
• December 26 – Claude Adrien Helvétius, French philosopher (born 1715){{cite book|author=National Cyclopaedia|title=The National Encyclopædia. Libr. ed|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2vVb7yP8_4kC&pg=PA253|year=1879|pages=253}}
• probable – Luis Galiana y Cervera, Spanish theologian, philologist and writer (born 1740)

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