This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1776.

• January 8 – The English actor John Philip Kemble makes his stage début, as Theodosius in Nathaniel Lee's eponymous tragedy, at Wolverhampton, England, with the Crump and Chamberlain company.^[1]
• August 7 – David Hume, weeks before his death, adds a codicil to his will, giving instructions for the publication of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, on which he has been working since 1750.^[2]
• unknown dates – The Wenyuan Chamber is built in China as an imperial library in the Forbidden City of Beijing.

• Elizabeth Griffith – The Story of Lady Juliana Harley
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi – Edward Allwill's Briefsammlung
• Ignacy Krasicki – The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom (Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki) (first novel in Polish)
• Samuel Jackson Pratt (as Courtney Melmoth) – The Pupil of Pleasure, or, The New System (Lord Chesterfield's) Illustrated

• George Edward Ayscough (adapted from Voltaire) – Semiramis
• Hannah Cowley – The Runaway
• Samuel Foote – The Bankrupt
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Stella (first version)
• Friedrich Maximilian Klinger – Sturm und Drang
• Johann Anton Leisewitz – Julius of Taranto (first performed)
• Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz – The Soldiers (Die Soldaten)
• Arthur Murphy – Three Weeks After Marriage
• Heinrich Leopold Wagner – Die Kindermörderin
• Lope de Vega (ed. Antonio de Sancha) – Obras sueltas

• James Beattie – Poems
• Richard Graves – Euphrosyne
• Hannah More – Sir Eldred of the Bower, and The Bleeding Rock
• Jonathan Richardson – Morning Thoughts
• John Scott – Amwell
• Augustus Montague Toplady – Psalms and Hymns
• William Whitehead – Variety
• Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Jovino a sus amigos de Salamanca

• John Adams – Thoughts on Government
• James Beattie – Essays
• Jeremy Bentham – Fragment on Government
• Charles Burney – A General History of Music (completed 1789)
• George Campbell – The Philosophy of Rhetoric
• David Dalrymple – Annals of Scotland
• Edward Gibbon – The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 1
• Oliver Goldsmith – A Survey of Experimental Philosophy
• Sir John Hawkins – A General History of the Science and Practice of Music
• David Herd – Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs
• Soame Jenyns – A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion
• Thomas Paine
  • Common Sense
  • The American Crisis
• Richard Price – Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty
• Adam Smith – An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

• January – Frances Burney, English dramatist (died 1828)
• January 17 – Jane Porter, Scottish novelist and dramatist (died 1850)
• January 24 – E. T. A. Hoffmann, German fantasy and horror writer (died 1822)
• February 12 – Richard Mant, English writer and cleric (died 1848)
• March 9 – Archibald Bell, Scottish lawyer and miscellanist (died 1854)
• April 13 – Wilhelm von Schütz, German author and playwright (died 1847)
• July 1 – Sophie Gay, French author (died 1852)
• September 21 – John Fitchett, English epic poet (died 1838)
• September 27 – Maria Versfelt, Dutch actress and memoirist (died 1845)
• November 16 – Mary Matilda Betham, English diarist, scholar and poet (died 1852)
• November 20 – William Blackwood, Scottish publisher (died 1834)

• April 29 – Edward Wortley Montagu, English travel writer (born 1713)
• May 23 – Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse (Mademoiselle de Lespinasse), French salonnière (born 1732)
• May 30 – Albert Frick, German theologian (born 1732)^[3]
• June 2 – Robert Foulis, Scottish art critic and publisher (born 1707)
• August 25 – David Hume, Scottish philosopher, historian and economist (born 1711)
• October 17 – Pierre François le Courayer, French theologian (born 1681)^[4]