1723 in literature

The year 1723 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Voltaire contracts smallpox.
• The book collection of Samuel Pepys is transferred to the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

New books

• Penelope Aubin - The Life of Charlotta Du Pont, an English lady; taken from her own memoirs
• Jane Barker - A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (fiction)
• Arthur Blackamore - Luck at Last
• Richard Blackmore - Alfred
• Elegy on the deplorable Death of Elizabeth Murray Sister to Sir William Murray of Newtoun barb'rously murdered by her Husband Thomas Kincaid younger of Gogar-Mains, March 29th 1723 (anonymous broadsheet)
• Eliza Haywood - Idalia
• Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard - Cato's Letters
• John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham - Works
• Ned Ward - Nuptial Dialogues and Debates

New drama

• Susanna Centlivre - The Artifice
• Elijah Fenton - Marianne
• Eliza Haywood - A Wife to be Let
• Charles Johnson - Love in a Forest (adapted from As You Like It)
• Pierre de Marivaux - La Double Inconstance
• Ambrose Philips - Humfrey, Duke of Floucester
• Richard Steele - The Conscious Lovers

Poetry

• David Mallet - William and Margaret
• William Meston - Knight of the Kirk
• Ambrose Philips - Ode on the Death of William, Earl of Cowper
• Matthew Prior
  • Down-Hall
  • The Turtle and the Sparrow
• Allan Ramsay - The Tea-Table Miscellany i.

Non-fiction

• Anderson's Constitutions of the Freemasons
• Henry Baker - An Invocation of Health
• Bernard de Mandeville - A Search into the Nature of Society

Births

• January 21 (or June 21) - Baron d'Holbach - philosopher, encyclopedist (died 1789)
• February 23 - Richard Price, philosopher (died 1791)
• February 24 - John Burgoyne, soldier and dramatist (died 1792)
• June 20 - Adam Ferguson, philosopher and historian (died 1816)
• July 11 - Jean-François Marmontel, French novelist and dramatist (died 1799)
• July 17 - Adam Smith - Scottish economist (died 1790)
• September 30 - William Hutton (historian), local historian
• November 8 - John Byron, English vice-admiral, grandfather of the poet Lord Byron (died 1786)
• November 30 - William Livingston, American politician and journalist (died 1790)
• December 26 - Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm (died 1807)

Deaths

• February 26 - Thomas D'Urfey, dramatist (born 1653)
• March 13 - René Auguste Constantin de Renneville, French Protestant poet and historian (born 1650)
• March 15 - Johann Christian Günther, German poet (born 1695)
• May 11 - Jean Galbert de Campistron, dramatist (born 1656)
• June 8 - Isaac Chayyim Cantarini, Italian poet, physician and preacher (born 1644)
• July 28 - Marianna Alcoforado, author of Letters of a Portuguese Nun (born 1640)
• August 21 - Dimitrie Cantemir, first author in the Romanian language (born 1673)
• September 23 - Jacques Basnages, Protestant poet, linguist and preacher (born 1653)
• December 1 - Susannah Centlivre, dramatist (born 1669)
• December 17 - John Trenchard, politician and writer (born 1662)