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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1757.

Events[edit]

February 16 – Jonathan Edwards becomes President of the institution that will become Princeton University.^[1]
May 3 – The Irish-born actress Peg Woffington, playing Rosalind in As You Like It, suffers a stroke on stage at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London and never acts again.^[2]
May 6 – Asylum confinement of Christopher Smart: The poet Christopher Smart is confined to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London.^[3]
May – The Baskerville typeface, designed by John Baskerville of Birmingham, England, is first used in a wove paper quarto edition of Virgil (Publii Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Æneis).
September – Pierre-Augustin Caron begins using the name Beaumarchais.^[4]
September 9 – The Parlement of Toulouse orders a public burning of Jesuit author Hermann Busenbaum's Medulla Theologiae Morales because of its treatment of the subject of regicide.^[5]
December 11 – On the death of Colley Cibber as Poet Laureate of Great Britain, the post is declined by Thomas Gray and passes to William Whitehead.
unknown dates
- Angelo Maria Bandini is appointed librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence.^[6]
- Robert Raikes becomes proprietor of the Gloucester Journal.
- Horace Walpole begins the Strawberry Hill Press.
- Thomas Warton is appointed Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.

John Brown – An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times
Edmund Burke – A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
John Dalrymple – An Essay Towards a General History of Feudal Property in Great Britain
Samuel Derrick (probable compiler) – Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (1st edn)
Adam Ferguson – The Morality of Stage-Plays Seriously Considered
Sarah Fielding – The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia
Edward and Elizabeth Griffith – A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances vols. i – ii.
David Hume – The Natural History of Religion
Soame Jenyns – A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil
Richard Price – Review of the Principal Questions in Morals
Madame Riccoboni – Lettres de Mistriss Fanny Butlerd.
Tobias Smollett – A Complete History of England
Horace Walpole – A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking
William Warburton – Remarks upon Mr. David Hume's Essay on the Natural History of Religion
Joseph Warton – Essay on Pope
John Wesley – The Doctrine of Original Sin

Anonymous – The Taxes
Phanuel Bacon – Humorous Ethics, or an Attempt to Cure the Vices and Follies of the Age by a Method Entirely New (5 plays)
Denis Diderot – Le Fils naturel
Samuel Foote – The Author
David Garrick – Lilliput
John Home – Douglas
Tobias Smollett – The Reprisal

Robert Andrews – Eidyllia
Cornelius Arnold – Poems
Samuel Boyce – Poems
John Gilbert Cooper as "Aristippus" – Epistles to the Great
John Duncombe – The Feminead (answer to 1754's Feminiad)
William Duncombe – The Works of Horace in English Verse (various translators).
John Dyer – The Fleece
Carlo Gozzi – La tartana degli influssi per l'anno 1756
Thomas Gray – Odes
William Thompson – Poems
William Wilkie – Epigoniad
Edward Young – The Works of the Author of Night Thoughts

February 1 – John Philip Kemble, English actor (died 1823)
February 6 – Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Polish poet and dramatist (died 1841)
April 9 – Wojciech Bogusławski, Polish actor, director and dramatist (died 1829)
July 21 – Basilius von Ramdohr, German journalist and critic (died 1822)
November 9 – William Sotheby, English poet and translator (died 1833)
November 13 – Archibald Alison, Scottish essayist and cleric (died 1839)
November 18 – William Blake, English poet and artist (died 1827)
November 27 (possible year) – Mary Robinson (née Darby), English poet, actress and royal mistress (died 1800)
December 4 – Charles Burney, English classicist and book thief (died 1817)
Unknown date – Giovanni Antonio Galignani, Italian publisher (died 1821)

January 9 – Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, French dramatist and author (born 1657)
January 19 – Thomas Ruddiman, Scottish classical scholar, editor, printer and librarian (born 1674)
March 1 – Edward Moore, English dramatist (born 1712)^[7]
March 8 – Thomas Blackwell, Scottish classical scholar (born 1701)
August 28 – David Hartley, English philosopher and psychologist (born 1705)
December 11
- Colley Cibber, English dramatist, actor-manager and Poet Laureate of Great Britain (born 1671)
- Edmund Curll, English bookseller and publisher (born 1675)
December 15 (burial) – John Dyer, a Welsh poet, painter and Anglican cleric (born 1699)

^ Jonathan Edwards (1840). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Ball, Arnold and Company. p. 274.
^ Sandra Mayer; Julia Novak (21 May 2020). Life Writing and Celebrity: Exploring Intersections. Taylor & Francis. p. 82. ISBN 978-1-00-068236-6.
^ Sherbo, Arthur (1967). Christopher Smart: Scholar of the University. Michigan State University Press. p. 112. He may have been confined in a private madhouse before this time.
^ Hugh Thomas (2006). Beaumarchais in Seville: An Intermezzo. Yale University Press. p. 23. ISBN 0-300-13464-9.
^ Voltaire; John Renwick (2000). Traité sur la tolérance. Voltaire Foundation. p. 308. ISBN 9780729407441.
^ William J. Connell (10 September 2002). Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence. University of California Press. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-520-23254-9.
^ Restoration and 18th-Century Drama. Macmillan International Higher Education. November 1980. p. 109. ISBN 978-1-349-16422-6.