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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1738.

Events

  • April 11 – Robert Blair marries Isabella Law.
  • July 10 – Richard Dawes is appointed Master of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.
  • August – Laurence Sterne is ordained a priest, and in the autumn becomes vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire.
  • August 8 – Jonathan Swift writes to Alexander Pope describing the deterioration in his mental condition; Swift will eventually be given into the care of a legal guardian.
  • September 18 – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer (published 1785).

New books

Prose

  • James Anderson – The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, 2nd ed.
  • Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens – Jewish Letters (published anonymously)
  • John Banks – Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose
  • Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten – De ordine in audiendis philosophicis per triennium academicum quaedam praefatus acroases proximae aestati destinatas indicit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
  • Louis de Beaufort – Dissertation sur l'incertitude des cinq prèmiers siècles de l'histoire romaine
  • Robert Dodsley – The Art of Preaching
  • Marie Huber – Lettres sur la religion essentielle à l'homme (Letters Concerning the Religion Essential to Man)
  • David Hume (anonymously) – A Treatise of Human Nature (dated 1739)
  • Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Sur la figure de la terre
  • Margareta Momma – Samtal emellan Argi Skugga och en obekant Fruentimbers Skugga (Conversation between the Shadow of Argus and the Unfamiliar Shadow of a Female)
  • Francis Moore – Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa
  • Abbé Prévost – Memoirs of a Man of Quality (anonymous English translation)
  • Thomas Shaw – Travels in Barbary and the Levant
  • Jonathan Swift
  • The Beasts Confession to the Priest
  • A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation
  • William Warburton
  • The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated
  • A Vindication of the author of the Divine Legation of Moses
  • George Whitefield – A Journal of a Voyage from London to Savannah in Georgia
  • Diego de Torres Villarroel
  • Anatomía de todo lo visible e invisible
  • Vida ejemplar de la venerable madre Gregoria Francisca de Santa Teresa

Drama

  • Robert Dodsley – Sir John Cockle at Court
  • Carlo Goldoni
  • Momolo Cortesan
  • L'uomo di mondo
  • Sir Hildebrand Jacob
  • The Happy Constancy
  • The Prodigal Reformed
  • The Trial of Conjugal Love
  • George Lillo – Marina (adapted from Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre)
  • Charles Marsh – Amasis, King of Egypt
  • James Miller –
  • Art and Nature
  • The Coffee House
  • Alexis Piron – La Metromanie
  • António José da Silva – Precipicio de Faetonte
  • James Thomson – Agamemnon

Poetry

  • Mark Akenside (anonymously) – A British Philippic
  • Elizabeth Carter (anonymously) – Poems Upon Particular Occasions
  • John Gay – Fables: Volume the Second
  • Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas líricas
  • Samuel Johnson – London, A Poem, on the Third Satire of Juvenal
  • Alexander Pope
  • The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
  • The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
  • (with Jonathan Swift) An Imitation of the Sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace
  • One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight
  • The Universal Prayer
  • One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight: Dialogue II
  • James Thomson – The Works of Mr Thomson
  • Diego de Torres Villarroel – Juguetes de Talia, entretenimiento del numen
  • John Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (first English edition)

Births

  • February 9 (baptized) – Mary Whateley, English poet and playwright (died 1825)
  • May 9 – John Wolcot, English satirist and poet (died 1819)
  • May 12 – Jonathan Boucher, English philologist (died 1804)
  • May 27 – Moritz August von Thümmel, German humorist and satirical author (died 1817)
  • June 21 – Gottlieb Christoph Harless, German bibliographer (died 1815)
  • July 24 – Betje Wolff, Dutch novelist (died 1804)
  • November 15 – Joseph Johnson, English publisher (died 1809)
  • December 4 – Karl Friedrich Kretschmann, German poet, playwright and storyteller (died 1809)
  • unknown date – Manuel Lassala, Spanish dramatist and philosopher (died 1806)

Deaths

  • January 6 – Jean-Baptiste Labat, French polymath (born 1663)
  • March – Margrethe Lasson, Danish novelist (born 1659)
  • April 25 – Giacomo Laderchi, Italian ecclesiastical historian (born c. 1678)
  • June 5 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant theologian (born 1659)
  • July 8 – Jean-Pierre Nicéron, French lexicographer (born 1685)
  • September 3 or 4 – George Lillo, English playwright (born 1691)
  • September 23 – Herman Boerhaave, Dutch humanist writer (born 1668)
  • November 10 – John Asgill, English pamphleteer (born 1659)

References