October 10 – Samuel Johnson's edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare is published in London after ten years in the making.
Approximate year – Beginning of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") movement in German literature.
Founding – Almanach des Muses, a French-language poetry magazine, is founded in Paris by Sautreau de Marsy. It will continue publication until 1833 and feature works by Voltaire, Beaumarchais, and others.
Works published
United Kingdom
Thomas Percy – Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (3 volumes). One of the most influential antiquarian publications of the 18th century, this collection of old heroic ballads, songs, and metrical romances drew primarily from a 17th-century folio manuscript (the "Percy Folio") that Percy rescued from being used as kindling. The work profoundly shaped the Romantic movement, inspiring Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) and Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802).
James Beattie – The Judgment of Paris (a philosophical poem published anonymously in pamphlet form) and Verses Occasioned by the Death of Charles Churchill.
Christopher Smart – A Translation of the Psalms of David, which includes "A Song to David" (first published separately in 1763) and "Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England."
John Ogilvie – Solitude: or, the Elysium of the Poets, a Vision; to which is subjoined an Elegy.
Anonymous (published by J. Dodsley) – A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands, featuring works by Thomas Tickell, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Matthew Green, Samuel Johnson, William Shenstone, John Dyer, William Collins, and others.
Other
Percival Stockdale – Churchill Defended (responding to the death of Charles Churchill in November 1764).
Charles Batteux – Cours de belles lettres (literary criticism; France; later included in Principes de la littérature, 1774).
American colonies
Anonymous – Liberty, Property, and No Excise (Boston broadside poem, composed on the occasion of the Stamp Act protests of August 14, 1765).
Anonymous – A Poetical Dream, Concerning Stamped Papers (published in New Haven, Connecticut; a political poem opposing the Stamp Act, in which various types of documents plead for their freedom from taxation).
Births
January 2 – Manoah Bodman (died 1850), American poet
February 11 – Elizabeth Cobbold, née Knipe (died 1824), English poet
April 22 – James Grahame (died 1811), Scottish poet, lawyer, and clergyman
