- Jan 12 Richard Challoner, English Catholic prelate (b. 1691)
- Jan 15 Marianne Victoria of Borbón, queen regent of Portugal (b. 1718)
- Jan 17 Marie de Negre Dables, marquess, dies
- Jan 22 Johann Siebenkas, composer, dies at 66
- Feb 4 Josef Mysliveček, Czech composer, dies at 43
- Feb 4 Willem Crul, British admiral (West-Indies), dies in battle during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War at 59
- Feb 15 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German critic and dramatist (1st ever dramaturge), dies at 52
- Feb 23 George Taylor, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (for Pennsylvania), dies at about 64 or 65
- Feb 24 Edward Capell, English critic, dies at 67
- Feb 28 Richard Stockton, American attorney and signer of Declaration of Independence, dies at 50
- Mar 18 Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, French economist and statesman (First Minister of State 1774-76), dies at 53
- Apr 23 James Abercrombie, British general (Commander-in-Chief of forces in North America during French and Indian wars) (b. 1706)
- Apr 28 Cornelius Harnett, American delegate to the Continental Congress, dies at 58
- May 8 Richard Jago, English poet (b. 1715)
- May 18 Túpac Amaru II, Peruvian-Indian revolutionary, a descendant of the last Inca ruler Túpac Amaru, dies at 43
- May 22 Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington, Anglo-Irish composer, dies at 45
- May 27 Giovanni Battista Beccaria, Italian physicist, dies at 64
- Jul 11 Adolph Carl Kunzen, composer, dies at 60
- Jul 23 John Joachim Zubly, Swiss-American Continental Congressman, dies at 56
- Jul 29 Johann Kies, German astronomer and mathematician, dies at 73
- Jul 30 Augustin Ullinger, German composer, dies at 35
- Sep 28 William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford, British diplomat and statesman (b. 1717)
- Oct 9 Thomas Erskine, 6th earl of Kellie, Scottish composer and musician, dies at 49
- Oct 16 Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke, British naval officer (b. 1705)
- Oct 27 Herman-Francois Delange, Belgian composer, dies at 66
- Nov 2 Jose Francisco de Isla [Francisco de Salazar], Spanish Jesuit preacher and satirist, dies at 78
- Nov 4 Johann Nikolaus Götz, German poet (Die Mädcheninsel), dies at 60
- Nov 22 Jan Ekels the Elder, Amsterdam painter and cartoonist, dies at 57
- Nov 24 James Caldwell, American revolutionary (b. 1734)
- Dec 16 Georg Simon Löhlein, German pianist and composer, dies at 56