Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

• March 1 (Saint David's Day) – Welsh ship's surgeon David Samwell, on board HMS Resolution in the Pacific Ocean on the second voyage of James Cook, writes a penillion.

• Thomas Chatterton, Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth Century, published anonymously, edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt; published February 8 (see also Tyrwhitt, A Vindication 1782)^[1]
• William Combe:
  • The Diaboliad, published anonymously, misdated "1677"; directed at Simon, Lord Irnham^[1]
  • The First of April; or, The Triumphs of Folly^[1]
• Thomas Day, The Desolation of America, published anonymously^[1]
• William Dodd, Thoughts in Prison^[1]
• William Roscoe, Mount Pleasant, published anonymously^[1]
• Thomas Warton, the younger, Poems: A new edition^[1]
• Paul Whitehead, Poems and Miscellaneous Compositions^[1]

• Anonymous, Song: made on the taking of General Burgoyne, a broadside of 21 four-line verses, published with no information on the place or printer^[2]
• Anonymous ("H. I."), Faction: a sketch; or, a summary of the causes of the present most unnatural and indefensible of all rebellion's (sic), "Written at New-York, February, 1776", published this year in New York, 8 pages^[3]
• Thomas Dawes, The Law Given at Sinai^[4]
• Francis Hopkinson, "Camp Ballad"^[4]

• Solomon Gessner, works, German-language, Switzerland; in two volumes, published this year and in 1777
• Pierre Le Tourneur, Poésies galliques, translation into French from the original English of James Macpherson's Ossian poems^[5]

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 27 – Lukijan Mušicki (died 1837), Serbian poet, prose writer and polyglot
• March 14 – John Blair Linn (died 1804), American^[6]
• July 27 – Thomas Campbell (died 1844), Scottish poet especially of sentimental poetry dealing with human affairs
• December 2 – Hendrik Doeff (died 1837), the first westerner to write haiku in Japanese

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 30 – Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae (born 1726), German writer, translator, editor and composer
• February 3 – Hugh Kelly (born 1739), Irish poet and dramatist
• March 2 – Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford (born 1717), English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician
• August 26 – Francis Fawkes (born 1720), English poet and translator
• September 24 (bur.) – James Fortescue (born 1716), English
• October 12 (October 1 O.S.) – Alexander Sumarokov (born 1717), Russian poet and dramatist
• December 12 – Albrecht von Haller (born 1708), German
• Christoph Friedrich Wedekind (born 1709), German
• Johann Gottlieb Willamov (born 1736), German

• List of years in poetry
• List of years in literature
• 18th century in poetry
• 18th century in literature
• French literature of the 18th century
• Sturm und Drang (the conventional translation is "Storm and Stress"; a more literal translation, however, might be "storm and urge", "storm and longing", "storm and drive" or "storm and impulse"), a movement in German literature (including poetry) and music from the late 1760s through the early 1780s
• List of years in poetry
• Poetry