Don Giovanni
1787
Mozart is said to have written the overture the night before the Prague premiere, and the orchestra sight-read it at the first performance.
★ 9.2
Browse by time · decade
1780s
1780 – 1789
Showing 214 works across all media from the 1780s
Constitution of the United States
1787
Critique of Pure Reason
1781 · 784 pages
Western thought divides at this book. Kant argues that space, time, and cause belong to the mind doing the looking rather than to the world, and marks the boundary reason cannot cross.
★ 8.8
The Oath of the Horatii
1785 · Louvre, Paris
Three brothers salute the swords their father holds up while the women of the house collapse at the right, four years before the Revolution.
★ 8.7
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
1789 · 155 pages
Short poems in simple meter about lambs, chimney sweeps, and a tiger burning in the forests of the night. Blake sets an innocent version beside a bitter one and lets you decide.
★ 8.2
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785
The Nightmare
1781 · Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
An incubus squats on a sleeping woman's chest while a wild-eyed horse pushes through the curtains. It made Fuseli famous immediately.
★ 7.8
The Death of Socrates
1787 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Socrates reaches for the hemlock without looking at it, still arguing with his other hand while his students fall apart around him.
★ 7.4
The Federalist Papers
1788 · 648 pages
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote eighty-five essays to sell New York on the Constitution, arguing that a large republic tames factions and that ambition must counteract ambition. Courts still quote them.
★ 7.3
Bill of Rights · 1789
Critique of Practical Reason
1788 · 224 pages
You know you ought to do what you would rather not, and Kant takes that as proof you are free. Freedom, God, and immortality return as what practical reason must assume.
★ 7.1
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
1785 · 130 pages
Nothing is good except a good will. From that Kant derives two commands: act only on a principle you could will everyone to follow, and treat persons as ends, never merely as means.
★ 7.1
Confessions
1782 · 676 pages
Every confessional memoir descends from this. Rousseau promised to show himself entire and delivered: the ribbon he stole and blamed on a servant girl, the five children he gave to a foundling hospital.
★ 7.1
Federalist 1 · 1787
Federalist 10 · 1787
Federalist 51 · 1788
Dangerous Liaisons
1782 · 448 pages
Two aristocrats conduct seduction as a military campaign, and every move reaches us through their own letters. Their targets are a devout married woman and a girl just out of the convent.
★ 6.6
1786
The Robbers
1781 · 472 pages
Karl Moor, disinherited by his brother's forged letter, takes a robber band into the Bohemian forests and learns that idealism under arms turns to butchery. Romantic literature has been rewriting him ever since.
★ 6.0
Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.
Confessions (Rousseau) · 1781
Notes on the State of Virginia · 1787
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · 1789
The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.
Confessions (Rousseau) · 1789
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship · 1786
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
The Annual Register, Or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, For the Year 1779 · 1780
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · 1781
Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785
Constitution of the United States
1787
Constitution of the United States
1787
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · 1789
All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · 1789
Letter to James Madison, 1789 · 1789
And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
Songs of Innocence · 1789
Bill of Rights · 1789