1763 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1763.

Events

• January – Christopher Smart's asylum confinement ends at Mr Potter's asylum in London (he was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in May 1757 and may have been confined before that; later he was moved to Potter's); while confined, Smart has written A Song to David, published this year, and Jubilate Agno, not published until 1939.
• April 30 – A warrant is issued in Britain for the arrest of John Wilkes for his seditious writings in The North Briton
• May 16 – James Boswell is introduced to Samuel Johnson at Thomas Davies's bookshop in Covent Garden, London.
• October 11 – Marriage of Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale, later close friends and companions of Dr Samuel Johnson.
• Fedor Emin writes Nepostoyannaya fortuna, the first Russian novel.
• The atheist English printer John Baskerville produces an edition of The Holy Bible for Cambridge University Press in his Baskerville typeface.
• Approximate date – Chinese Qing dynasty scholar Sun Zhu compiles Three Hundred Tang Poems, an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907).

New books

Births

• January 15 – François-Joseph Talma, French actor (died 1826)
• January 29 – Johann Gottfried Seume, German travel writer (died 1810)
• March 9 – William Cobbett, English political and economic writer (died 1835)
• March 16 – Mary Berry, English dramatist and correspondent (died 1852)
• March 21 – Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter), German novelist (died 1825)
• May 9 – János Batsányi, Hungarian poet and anti-Habsburg activist (died 1845)
• June 15 – Kobayashi Issa, Japanese haiku poet (died 1828)
• July 30 – Samuel Rogers, English poet (died 1855)
• September 2 – Caroline Schelling (Caroline Michaelis), German literary critic (died 1809)
• October 10 – Xavier de Maistre, French soldier and writer (died 1852)
• December 6 – Mary Anne Burges, Scottish religious allegorist (died 1813)
• Unknown dates
  • Huang Peilie, Chinese bibliophile (died 1825)^[1]
  • Shen Fu, Chinese chronicler (died c. 1825)

Deaths

• January 11 – Caspar Abel, German poet and theologian (born 1676)
• February 11 – William Shenstone, English poet (born 1714)
• June 29 – Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, Swedish poet and salonnière (born 1718)
• September 26 – John Byrom, English poet (born 1692)
• December 23 – Antoine François Prévost (Abbé Prévost), French author (born 1697)
• Probable year of death – Cao Xueqin, Chinese novelist (born c. 1715)

References