1732 in literature

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The year 1732 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• The first edition of Poor Richard's Almanac, by Benjamin Franklin, is published.
• Alexander Pope begins Essay on Man, with the first two "Epistles: Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to" (1) "The Universe" and (2) "Himself as an Individual" (the 3rd/4th were written in 1733/1744).
• The first Royal Opera House at Covent Garden opens on December 7.

New books

• Anonymous - Castle-Howard
  • - The Gentleman's Study in Answer to the Lady's Dressing Room (reply to Swift)
  • - A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose . . . on Occasion of the Dunciad
• Corporate authorship - the London Magazine (periodical)
• George Berkeley - Alciphron
• Johann Jakob Bodmer - translation of John Milton's Paradise Lost into German prose
• Elizabeth Boyd - The Happy-Unfortunate
• Mary Davys - The False Friend (fiction)
• Philip Doddridge - Sermons on the Religious Education of Children
• Robert Dodsley - A Muse in Livery
• George Granville, Lord Lansdowne - The Genuine Works
• John Horsley - Britannia Romana, or The Roman Antiquities of Britain
• William King - The Toast
• George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton - The Progress of Love
• John Milton - Milton's Paradise Lost, edited by Richard Bentley
• Daniel Neal - The History of the Puritans or Protestant Non-Conformists
• Richard Savage - An Epistle to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole
• Jonathan Swift - The Lady's Dressing Room
  • - The Grand Question Debated
  • with Pope and others - Miscellanies: The Third Volume
• Isaac Watts - A Short View of the Whole Scripture History
• Leonard Welsted - Of Dulness and Scandal (answer to The Dunciad)
• Gilbert West - Stowe

Newly printed plays

• Henry Carey - Amelia (opera)
  • - The Disappointment
  • - Terminta
• Henry Fielding - The Lottery
  • - The Modern Husband
  • - The Covent-Garden Tragedy
  • - The Old Debauchees
  • - The Mock Doctor
• John Gay (with Alexander Pope) - Acis and Galatea (opera by Handel)
• John Kelly - The Married Philosopher

Births

• January 24 - Pierre de Beaumarchais, French writer (died 1799)
• February 19 - Richard Cumberland (dramatist) (died 1811)
• September 29 - Samuel Musgrave, classical scholar and pamphleteer (died 1780)
• unknown date - George Colman the Elder (died 1794)
• John Ogilvie
• Joseph Haydn
• George Washington, American President

Deaths

• February 22 - Francis Atterbury (born 1663)
• March 20 - Johann Ernst Hanxleden, poet and lexicographer (born 1681)
• December 4 - John Gay, English poet and dramatist (born 1685)
• Jane Barker, dramatist and poet
• Mary Davys, poet and dramatist