1796 in Great Britain - Publications

Publications

• Fanny Burney's novel Camilla: or, A Picture of Youth.
• Mary Hays' epistolatory novel Memoirs of Emma Courtney.
• Regina Maria Roche's popular Gothic novel The Children of the Abbey.
• Samuel Ireland publishes a collection of Shakespearean forgeries in his Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments Under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare (dated this year but actually produced on 24 December 1795). Edmond Malone exposes them in his An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments on 31 March, and the forged 'Shakespearean' play, Vortigern and Rowena, is able to sustain just a single performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, on 2 April. Ireland's son, William Henry, confesses to the fraud in An Authentic Account of the Shakespearean Manuscripts.
• The volume of The Scots Musical Museum published this year includes Robert Burns' versions of Auld Lang Syne and Charlie Is My Darling.