1759 in literature

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Events

• January 23: The French parliament condemned Helvétius De l' esprit ( The Spirit ) and the Encyclopédie
• March 4: The Encyclopédie comes to the index. As the muscles are several employees, including Turgot and Marmontel, of the project back.

Prose

• Voltaire published anonymously the novella Candide, or Optimism.
• The first two volumes of the nine -part novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne appear.
• Samuel Johnson published the political- didactic novel History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
• The English writer Sarah Fielding published the novel The History of the Countess of Dellwyn.

Drama

• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote the tragedy Philotas.

Scientific works

• Robert Symmer published his millenarian theory of electricity ( with the Fluidumshypothese ).
• The Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers by Denis Diderot is set to the Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Co-editor Jean -Baptiste le Rond d' Alembert withdrew from the project.

Born

• JANUARY 25: Robert Burns, Scottish novelist and poet († 1796)
• February 1: Karl Friedrich Hensler, Austrian theater director († 1825)
• MARCH 16: Bengt Lidner, Swedish poet († 1793)
• April 19: August Wilhelm Iffland, German actor, theater director and playwright († 1814)
• April 27: Mary Wollstonecraft, British writer and suffragette († 1797)
• NOVEMBER 10: Friedrich Schiller, German poet, playwright and historian († 1805)

Died

• Hattori Nankaku, Japanese poet and painter (* 1683)