1722 in literature

The year 1722 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Voltaire and Jean-Baptiste Rousseau meet and quarrel at Brussels.
• Ten-year-old Jean-Jacques Rousseau is abandoned by his father, Isaac.
• William Wood gets a patent to issue copper coins in Ireland.
• Edmund Bolton's Hypercritica is published, a century after it was written.

New books

• Penelope Aubin -The Life and Amorous Adventures of Lucinda (fiction)
  • The Noble Slaves (fiction)
• Phanuel Bacon - The Kite
• Daniel Bellamy - The Cambro-Britannic Engineer
• Thomas Cooke - Marlborough (written after his death)
• Samuel Croxall - Fables of Aesop and Others
• Daniel Defoe - Moll Flanders
  • A Journal of the Plague Year
  • Colonel Jack
  • Due Preparations for the Plague
  • Religious Courtship
• John Dennis - A Defence of Sir Fopling Flutter
• William Hamilton - The Life and Heroick Actions of the Renoun'd Sir William Wallace
• Eliza Haywood - The British Recluse (fiction)
• Hildebrand Jacob - Bedlam
• Allan Ramsay - Fables and Tales
• Sir Charles Sedley - Works
• William Sewel - The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers
• Jonathan Swift - A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General (satire on Marlborough, written before his death)
• Matthew Tindal - A Defence of Our Present Happy Establishment
• Isaac Watts - Death and Heaven
• William Wollaston - The Religion of Nature Delineated

New drama

• Henry Carey - Hanging and Marriage
• Pierre de Marivaux - La Surprise de l'amour
• Ambrose Philips - The Briton
• Archibald Pitcairne - The Assembly, or Scotch Reformation
• Richard Steele - The Conscious Lovers

Poetry

• Thomas Parnell - Poems on Several Occasions
• Elizabeth Thomas - Miscellany Poems on Several Subjects

Births

• February 24 - John Burgoyne, soldier and dramatist
• April - Joseph Warton, English poet and critic (died 1800)
• April 11 - Christopher Smart, English poet (died 1771)
• September 22 - John Home, Scottish dramatist (died 1808)
• October 4 - Dominic Schram, theologian (died 1797)
• date unknown
  • John Brown, theologian
  • Mary Leapor, poet (died 1746)
  • Waris Shah, Punjabi Muslim poet (died 1798)

Deaths

• January 23 - Henri de Boulainvilliers, historian (born 1658)
• March 11 - John Toland, philosopher (born 1670)
• August - Robert Sibbald, antiquary (born 1641)
• September 18 - André Dacier, French scholar (born 1651)
• December 26 - Jan František Beckovský, Czech historian and translator (born 1658)
• date unknown
  • Johann Michael Heineccius, theologian (born 1674)