See also: 1763 in literature, other events of 1764, 1765 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• John Wilkes is expelled from the English House of Commons
• October 15 - While visiting Rome, Edward Gibbon observes a group of barefoot friars singing vespers in the ruined Temple of Jupiter, a sight which inspires him to begin work on a history that will be published as The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Samuel Johnson began "The Literary Club"
• The Hartford Courant begins publication

New books

• John Cleland - The Surprises of Love
• Phebe Gibbes - The History of Lady Louisa Stroud
• Susannah Minifie - Family Pictures
• "George Psalmanazar" - Memoirs of ***, Commonly Known by the Name of George Psalamanazar
• James Ridley as "Sir Charles Morell" - The Tales of the Genii
• Horace Walpole - The Castle of Otranto

New drama

• Samuel Foote - The Patron
• Arthur Murphy
  • No One's Enemy But His Own
  • What We Must All Come To
• Kane O'Hara - Midas
• Frances Sheridan - The Dupe
• Christopher Smart - Hannah

Poetry

• Charles Churchill
  • The Candidate
  • The Duellist
  • The Farewell
  • Gotham (book i)
  • Independence
  • The Times
• John Gilbert Cooper - Poems
• Oliver Goldsmith - The Traveller
• James Grainger - The Sugar-Cane
• Johann Georg Jacobi - Foeiische Versuche
• Edward Jerningham - The Nun
• George Keate - The Ruins of Netley Abbey
• Mary Latter - Liberty and Interest
• William Mason - Poems
• William Williams Pantycelyn - Bywyd a Marwolaeth Theomemphus (Welsh language)
• Christopher Smart - A Poetical Translation of the Fables of Phaedrus
• Thomas Warton - The Oxford Sausage

Non-fiction

• David Erskine Baker - The Companion to the Play-house (dictionary of dramatists and plays)
• Cesare Beccaria - Dei delitti e delle pene
• Oliver Goldsmith - An History of England
• Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury - The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury
• Immanuel Kant - Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
• Gottfried Leibniz - Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain
• John Newton - An Authentic Narrative of Some Remarkable and Interesting Particulars in the Life of Newton
• Anthony Purver - A New and Literal Translation of all the Books of the Old and New Testament (Bible)
• Thomas Reid - An Inquiry into the Human Mind
• William Shenstone - Works
• Voltaire - Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary

Births

• February 11 - Joseph Chénier, French poet (died 1811)
• April 20 - Rudolph Ackermann, publisher (died 1834)
• July 9 - Ann Radcliffe (died 1823)

Deaths

• September 23 - Robert Dodsley (born 1703)
• November 4 - Charles Churchill, poet and satirist (born 1731)
• Robert Lloyd, poet
• William Hogarth, painter, satirist, and artist
• John Philippe Rameau