1766 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1766. Events Early – The young Fanny Burney pays one of many visits to Samuel Crisp, a frustrated author and friend of her father living in retirement at Chessington Hall, England. May 30 – The Theatre Royal, Bristol, England, opens. Also this year in England, the surviving Georgian Theatre (Stockton-on-Tees) opens as a playhouse. July 1 – François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, is tortured and beheaded before his body is burnt on a pyre, with a copy of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique nailed to his torso, for the crime of not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville and for other acts of sacrilege, including desecration of a crucifix. December 2 – The Law on the Freedom of Printing abolishes censorship in Sweden and guarantees freedom of the press. unknown dates The Drottningholm Palace Theatre is reopened as an opera house in Stockholm, Sweden, in its surviving form, designed by Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz. Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg begins to publish his Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Litteratur, in which he formulates the literary principles of Sturm und Drang. New books Fiction Henry Brooke – The Fool of Quality Oliver Goldsmith – The Vicar of Wakefield Catherine Jemmat – Miscellanies Charlotte Lennox – The History of Eliza Susannah Minifie – The Picture Sarah Scott – The History of Sir George Ellison Pu Songling (died 1715) – Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異, Liaozhai Zhiyi; first surviving printed edition) Christoph Martin Wieland – Geschichte des Agathon Anna Williams – Miscellanies in Prose and Verse