1773 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1773. Events January – Christoph Martin Wieland begins publishing the influential literary monthly Der Teutsche Merkur in Weimar. March 15 – Oliver Goldsmith's comedy She Stoops to Conquer is performed for the first time, at the Covent Garden Theatre in London. April 13 – Richard Brinsley Sheridan marries singer and actress Elizabeth Ann Linley. May 1 – Richard Wroughton takes the role of Prince Henry in Henry II, King of England by John Bancroft at Covent Garden. May 4 – Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill composes the keen Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire over the body of her husband Art Ó Laoghaire. August 6 – Samuel Johnson sets out for Scotland, where on August 14 he meets James Boswell in Edinburgh for their tour to the Hebrides. September 1 – Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley (described as "Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England"), the first work of an African American female writer to be published in English, including "On Being Brought from Africa to America", is published in Aldgate, London by Archibald Bell, bookseller, because publishers in Boston, Massachusetts, had declined to publish it and Wheatley and her master's son, Nathanial Wheatley, had come to London where Selina, Countess of Huntingdon and the Earl of Dartmouth helped with the publication. unknown dates Cláudio Manuel da Costa writes his epic poem Vila Rica, relating the history of the homonymous Brazilian city, modern-day Ouro Preto; it is not published until 1839. The last five cantos of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's epic poem Der Messias are published in Hamburg. Compilation of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries begins in Qing Dynasty China. The Wenjin Chamber is built at the Chengde Mountain Resort to accommodate a copy. New books Fiction Elizabeth Bonhote – The Fashionable Friend Calixto Bustamante Carlos (Concolorcorvo) – Lazarillo de ciegos caminantes José Cadalso – Cartas marruecas (Moroccan letters) Mrs Fogerty – The Fatal Connexion Richard Graves – The Spiritual Quixote Henry Mackenzie – The Man of the World Johann Karl Wezel – Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts, des Weisen, sonst der Stammler genannt: aus Familiennachrichten gesammelt (Life story of Tobias Knaut the Wise, Otherwise Called the Stammerer; publication begins)