This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1755.

Contents

• Events
• New Books
• Fiction
• Poetry
• Non-fiction
• Drama
• Births
• Deaths
• References

LEXICOGRAPHER. A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

—Self-deprecating definition by Samuel Johnson from A Dictionary of the English Language

Events

• April 15 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published by the group of London booksellers who commissioned it in June 1746, ^[1] two months after Johnson was awarded the degree of Master of Arts (A.M.) by the University of Oxford, his alma mater.
• unknown dates
  • Milton's Paradise Lost is translated into French prose by Louis Racine.
  • The first New Testament in the Ume Sami language is published.

New Books

Drama

• John Brown – Barbarossa
• John Cleland – Titus Vespasian
• Thomas Francklin – The Orphan of China
• David Garrick – The Fairies (opera)
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Miss Sara Sampson
• David Mallet – Britannia
• Vicente Garcia de la Huerta – Endimión

Births

• February 17 – Dorothy Kilner, English children's writer (died 1836)
• February 21 – Anne Grant, Scottish poet (died 1838)
• March 5 – Jozef Ignác Bajza, pioneer Slovak novelist, satirist and priest (died 1836)
• March 15 – George Dyer, English poet and classicist (died 1841)
• December 31 – Thomas Grenville, English politician and book collector (died 1846)
• Unknown date – Maria Elizabetha Jacson, English writer on botany and gardening (died 1829)
• 1755/6 – Eliza Fay, English letter-writer and traveler (died 1816)

Deaths

• February 10 – Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, French satirist (born 1689) ^[2]
• March – Jane Collier, English novelist (born 1715)
• April 6 – Richard Rawlinson, English antiquary and cleric (born 1690)
• September 9 – Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, German Lutheran church historian (born 1693)
• December 29 – Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, French children's writer (born c. 1695)
• Unknown date – Antoni Serra Serra, Spanish religious writer (born 1708)

References