1762 in literature

See also: 1761 in literature, other events of 1762, 1763 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• The assassination of Peter III of Russia and the coronation of Catherine the Great.
• Founding of the Sorbonne library.
• Académie française produces new edition of its dictionary of the French language.
• The Cock Lane Ghost.
• Benjamin Victor's adaptation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona (with expanded roles for the clown Launce and his dog) is staged by David Garrick at Drury Lane, and runs for five nights. It is the earliest known performance of that Shakespearean play in any form.
• Christoph Martin Wieland begins publishing his prose translations of 22 Shakespearean plays, their first translations into German (in 8 volumes, through 1766).
• Nothing happened.

New books

• Corporate authorship - The North Briton (periodical)
• George Campbell - A Dissertation on Miracles
• Jacques Cazotte - Ollivier.
• Denis Diderot - Éloge de Richardson
• Henry Fielding - Works
• Oliver Goldsmith:
• The Life of Richard Nash
• The Mystery Revealed (on the Cock Lane Ghost)
• Paisiy Hilendarski - Slavonic-Bulgarian History
• Henry Home - Elements of Criticism
• Richard Hurd - Letters on Chivalry and Romance
• John Langhorne - Letters on Religious Retirement, Melancholy and Enthusiasm
• Robert Lowth - A Short Introduction to English Grammar
• Joseph Priestley - A Course of Lectures on the Theory of Language, and Universal Grammar
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract
• Horace Walpole - Anecdotes of Painting in England, volume 1

Poetry

• James Boswell - The Cub at Newmarket
• Elizabeth Carter - Poems
• Charles Churchill - The Ghost (books i - ii)
• Mary Collier - Poems
• John Cunningham - The Contemplatist
• Thomas Denton - The House of Superstition
• Tomás Antônio Gonzaga - Marília de Dirceu
• Edward Jerningham - The Nunnery
• Robert Lloyd - Poems
• James Macpherson as "Ossian" - Fingal
• John Ogilvie - Poems
• William Whitehead - A Charge to the Poets
• Edward Young - Resignation

Fiction

• John Cleland - The Romance of a Night (attrib.)
• Oliver Goldsmith - The Citizen of the World
• Charles Johnstone - The Reverie
• William Kenrick - Emilius and Sophia (translation of Rousseau)
• John Langhorne - Solyman and Almena
• John Leland - Longsword
• Charlotte Lennox - Sophia
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Émile.
• Sarah Scott - A Description of Millenium Hall and the Country Adjacent
• Tobias Smollett - The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves
• Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (vols. v - vi)

New drama

• John Delap - Hecuba
• Samuel Foote - The Orators
• David Garrick - Cymbeline (adapted)
• Charlotte Lennox - The Sister

Births

• January 11 - Andrew Cherry (died 1812)
• September 11 - Joanna Baillie (died 1851)
• September 24 - William Lisle Bowles (died 1850)
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte, future philosopher of history

Deaths

• August 21 - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (born 1698)
• Beau Nash